Cedric The Entertainer Inks CBS Deal, Sets Up Firefighter Comedy ‘Ladder 54’

CBS has signed a development deal with Cedric the Entertainer. Under the pact, the network will develop multiple scripts as starring vehicles for Cedric with the intention for one of them to go to pilot. The arrangement is reminiscent of the 3-for-1 deals CBS used to do a lot of in the past where it would commission three scripts, one of which was guaranteed a pilot order.

The first project under Cedric’s deal is multi-camera workplace comedy Ladder 54, from Kapital Entertainment and CBS TV Studios, which is believed to have a put pilot commitment.

Written by Grounded For Life creators Bill Martin & Mike Schiff based on a story by the two of them, Cedric the Entertainer and Eric Rhone, Ladder 54 — originally envisioned as single-camera — is set at a big-city firehouse. Stuck there for long shifts, a crew of firefighters eat, sleep, live, laugh and fight with each other, their relationships made more intense by the fact that at any moment, they’ll be risking their lives for one another. They’re led by a flawed but devoted captain (Cedric) whose biggest fires are in his personal life.

Cedric the Entertainer and Rhone executive produce via A Bird And A Bear Entertainment alongside Martin & Schiff and Kapital’s Kaplan and Dana Honor.

Martin and Schiff previously executive produced Cedric’s TV Land comedy series The Soul Man. They are repped by WME and Gander & Kelly.

Currently, Cedric is touring nationally on “The Comedy Get Down Tour” with fellow comedians George Lopez, D.L. Hughley and Eddie Griffin. He next co-stars on the TBS comedy series The Last O.G. opposite Tracy Morgan. Cedric the Entertainer and A Bird And A Bear are repped by CAA, Visions Management, and attorneys Gordon Bobb and Nina Shaw.

At CBS, where Kapital has thee series on the air — Life In Pieces, 9JKL and Me, Myself & I — the company has a a pilot production commitment for Jim Reynolds/CBS Studios’ multi-camera comedy Here Comes the Neighborhood and a put pilot for Liz Astrof/WBTV’s multi-camera comedy The Big House.