Apple Casts Steve Carell In Untitled Dramatic Morning News Show

Image from Variety

By Darian Scalamoni

            With all the constant talk of reboots on television, one of the comedies that constantly is in the news for an “Will they? Won’t they?” is NBC’s The Office. Steve Carell, the longtime star of the series has said on multiple occasions that he would not return if it did happen. This would be detrimental as Michael Scott is clearly the driving force of the sitcom. However, it appears that Carell will return to the TV landscape in another capacity.

            According to The Hollywood Reporter, Carell will star in a dramatic series for Apple’s upcoming streaming service. The series revolves around a morning television show and gives an inside look at the lives of the people who help wake up the American public. Carell is joined by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in the series; the latter is also executive producing the show under her production company, Hello Sunshine. The currently untitled program is based on the book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV written by Brian Stelter.

            Carell will play the character, Mitch Kessler, a morning show anchor who is struggling to maintain relevance and popular in the rapidly-changing media landscape. Kerry Ehrin, who previously worked on Friday Night Lights and created Bates Motel has been tapped as showrunner while Mimi Leder will direct. Leder executive produced HBO drama, The Leftovers and her upcoming film, The Basis of Sex hits theaters on Christmas Day.

            More news continues to spill out about the streaming service, but Apple must be fairly confident in this series as it has already given it a two-season, 20-episode order. They plan to launch the service sometime in 2019. It was reported recently that the original content will be available for free to anyone with an Apple device that has the Apple TV app. This had yet to be confirmed but other news that had the TV world confused was their approach that the company is focused on creating mostly PG-rated content.

            Carell can be seen in theaters now in Beautiful Boy as well as the upcoming drama Welcome to Marwen directed by Robert Zemeckis. He’ll also be reuniting with his director from The Big Short, Adam McKay in his latest, Vice as Donald Rumsfeld. Both movies hit theaters in late-December.