Ben Stiller, who is a serious artist on a mission to do serious work, has teamed up with independent TV studio Media Rights Capital to executive produce and direct multiple episodes of the dramedy Super Sad True Love Story. The series, co-written by Gary Shteyngart and Karl Gajdusek (Last Resort), is based on Shteyngart’s novel of the same name. The series currently has neither a cast nor a network to call its home, but that isn’t unusual for MRC—House Of Cards and the upcoming Blunt Talk were both produced independently before landing at Netflix and Starz, respectively.
Set in the near future—possibly even next Tuesday, according to the novel’s official website—Super Sad True Love Story follows Lenny Abramov, a 39-year-old author and son of an angry Russian immigrant janitor, as he struggles with a tech-obsessed society and falls in love with an “impossibly cute and impossibly cruel” 24-year-old Korean American woman. Abramov attempts to balance this relationship with the demands of his boss at the Post-Human Services, which “attempt[s] to provide immortality for its super-rich clientele,” he presumably lands himself in plenty of super sad, yet super sweet shenanigans. Stiller has not yet been tapped to fill the lead role, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he eventually were.