Having already promised to mine hot-button issues such as nativism and immigration reform for comedy on the big screen, Adam McKay and Will Ferrell are now preparing to take on the world (of a rich, dysfunctional family). Uproxx reports that the collabros are developing a pilot for HBO called Succession, which will follow an “American global-media family with plenty of wealth and power,” that’s nonetheless far from perfect (hard to believe, we know).
In addition to producing the project with Ferrell, McKay will also direct the pilot from a script by Peep Show writer Jesse Armstrong, whom the duo’s already tapped to write their border-patrol comedy. The pilot/series will explore “international business and the perils of power in the 21st century,” though the latter presumably only pose a threat to those without power in contemporary society. Of course, McKay and Ferrell could just go the route of staging dramatic readings of conversations from Keeping Up With The Kardashians—that is what they mean by “global-media family,” right?
Succession is one of two family drama pilots HBO recently picked up—the other is Kathryn Bigelow’s Mogadishu, Minnesota, which is going in a slightly different route by examining “what it means to be American among the Somalis of Minnesota.”