AMC grabs new shows about body-shaming and alien abduction from Marti Noxon and Rainn Wilson

Deadline reports that AMC set out an ambitious new development slate today at the TCAs, including projects from Buffy alum, Mad Men producer, and unREAL creator Marti Noxon, and a new, extraterrestrial TV project from The Office star Rainn Wilson.

The network gave a full series pick-up to Noxon’s Dietland, a new drama/revenge fantasy about the world of body image and diet culture. AMC hasn’t announced any casting yet, but the series is based on a 2015 novel of the same name by Sarai Walker, about an overweight young woman who ends up embroiled in subversive sub-cultures when she starts writing a dieting and advice column from behind an online “skinny-girl” persona. The series’ first season will run for 10 episodes, and will air some time in 2018.

Meanwhile, Wilson’s project is just starting on development, but offers a premise that seems well-suited to the actor’s love of slovenly, off-kilter characters. So far only known as “Untitled Rainn Wilson Project,” the series would see the actor play a middle-aged loser whose addiction-prone life is suddenly changed when he’s taken over by an alien entity living in California. (We’re imagining Wilson in his bathrobe, staring around his house like he’s never seen a refrigerator before. You can kind of picture it, right?) The dark comedy is being produced by Odenkirk Provissiero, the same company that does Better Call Saul, and will hopefully last longer than Wilson’s last effort to anchor a post-Office series, Backstrom. (The A.V. Club apologizes for making you briefly remember that Backstrom existed.)