CBS Developing Adaptation Of British Comedy ‘Ghosts’ With Joe Port & Joe Wiseman; Project Kicks Off Lionsgate & BBC Studios Partnership

EXCLUSIVE: CBS is developing an adaptation of British comedy Ghosts with New Girl co-exec producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. It marks the first project announced after a wide-ranging deal struck between Lionsgate and BBC Studios.

The network is adapting the BBC One series as a single camera comedy with Port and Wiseman writing and exec producing.

The oddball comedy follows a young couple, whose dreams come true when they inherit a beautiful country house, only to find it’s both falling apart and inhabited by many of the deceased previous residents.

Ghosts originally aired on BBC One in April 2019. Produced by ITV-backed Harlots producer Monumental Television, it was created by a number of the team behind BBC comedy Horrible Histories including Mathew Baynton, Jim Howick, Simon Farnaby, Laurence Rickard, Ben Willbond and Martha Howe-Douglas, who all star alongside, Lolly Adefope and Charlotte Ritchie. The BBC version has been renewed for a second and third season.

Lionsgate Television and BBC Studios will produce the CBS version in association with CBS Television Studios. It kicks off the partnership between the Orange Is The New Black producer and the production arm of the British public broadcaster, which agreed to co-develop and co-fund scripted series for the U.S. market in October 2018.

Wiseman and Port (left) have worked on series including New Girl, Me, Myself and I and Fam and last year exec produced comedy pilot To Whom It May Concern at CBS. Baynton, Howick, Farnaby, Rickard, Willbond and Howe-Douglas exec produce alongside  Wiseman and Port  as well as Monumental Television’s Alison Carpenter, Debra Hayward and Alison Owen and BBC Studios’ Angie Stephenson.

Port and Wiseman are represented by Myman Greenspan Fox Rosenberg Mobasser Younger & Light LLP, and Michael Lasker at Mosaic.