Jesse Eisenberg is best known for his movie roles, where he plays evil tech geniuses, different evil tech geniuses, and weird magic guys, but he’s really going to show what he’s made of for a new TV project from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company. The show is a half-hour comedy called The Market, and Eisenberg is set to direct, write, and star in it, meaning he’ll be doing a whole lot more than playing an evil tech guy or a magician.
Deadline says the show is about a recently widowed man who moves to Pittsburgh to live with his son, Eisenberg’s character. Both men coincidentally lose their jobs shortly after that “due to the changing American economy,” and then they both have to enter the “unforgiving job market” together. Eisenberg is an accomplished playwright and a contributor to The New Yorker, so he has some experience writing, but it remains to be seen if The Market will rise above its very sitcom-y premise.