Schitt’s Creek co-creator Dan Levy signs TV and film deal with Netflix
His first project for the streamer is an untitled romantic comedy
TV News Dan Levy
More projects from Schitt’s Creek co-creator Dan Levy are on the way. The writer and producer has signed an 8-figure overall deal with Netflix for television series and film.
Levy’s first project kicks off immediately. On the film side of Netflix, he is working on an untitled romantic comedy that he’ll star in, write, produce, and direct. Stacey Snider and Kate Fenske, from the media studio SISTER, will produce the film with Levy.
The actor created the Canadian comedy series Schitt’s Creek with his father Eugene Levy in 2015. After airing solely on Pop TV, the show’s popularity skyrocketed once it arrived on Netflix in 2017. A family affair through and through, both Eugene and Dan starred in the series, as well as Dan’s sister Sarah Levy. Following its final season in 2020, Schitt’s Creek made history as first comedy to win every major award category (acting, directing, writing, producing).
“Netflix offered Schitt’s Creek a second home at just the right time and opened the doors to a whole new audience for us,” Levy said in a statement. “Watching the show thrive there has only enhanced my excitement about continuing to tell specific, meaningful stories with them in both TV and feature film. A full circle moment.”
Levy currently has other ongoing television projects for Disney through ABC Studios. Last month, Hulu ordered a pilot presentation for Levy’s animated comedy Standing By, which focuses on a group of disgruntled guardian angels. In addition to creating the show with Ally Pankiw, Levy is set to voice a solitary and cynical member of the angels. Over at Hulu, he also starred in the queer Christmas rom-com, Happiest Season. In 2019, Levy signed the three year deal with ABC, and will begin creating shows for Netflix when it expires next year in June. According to Deadline, he currently has three live-action projects slated for ABC.
When it comes to what exactly to expect from the creator, Levy told Variety last year not to box him into comedies. “I want to keep telling stories that mean something to me, and that are potentially joyful,” Levy said. “My list of ideas that I’ve been scratching down over the past six years while I’ve been doing this show is anything from thrillers to dramas, to other comedies to musicals.”
49 Comments
Situations like this interest me. Obviously it helps when your dad is a comedy legend who can give you a super charged networking boost. But clearly it takes more than that (glances nervously towards Chet Haze). Dan Levy is objectively super creative/talented. So my question is this:Did Eugene Levy consciously teach his kids about comedy, acting, show business, etc?
Did Dan Levy and his sister subconsciously absorb something growing up with Eugen Levy as their dad?Was Eugene Levy just talented on his own and just happened to be lucky enough that he had a dad who could make connections for him?Was Eugene Levy so talented that it wouldn’t even have mattered who his dad was?
It definitely feels like he’s riding his fathers coat tails considering his choice in hairdo and glasses. there have been actors that go by a different name as a means to disassociate themselves from their parent’s success in the same field, but he is not one of them.
Yes. P.S. I’m thinking the last two Eugenes in your post should be Dans.
goddammit
Too late to edit now. To your post, though, Dan’s lucky he inherited all that talent & those connections along with those eyebrows.
Oh don’t think I didn’t try!Seems like a fair trade re: the eyebrows. My dad kind of looks like Eugene Levy, only he’s bald, and I’m turning into him. Neither of us are comedy legends.
Your meat is too hard.
(glances nervously towards Chet Haze, but it’s because I’m afraid he’s going to ask to bum a smoke then try to sell me a CD of his new ‘joint’)
I imagine any glance towards Chet Haze is nervous so that was perhaps redundant.
I would quibble with the assertion that Dan is objectively super creative based on his work on a family sitcom, but I suppose he does have some talent. Eugene, on the other hand, worked on a legendary sketch show, and several highly-regarded mockumentaries, two things which don’t follow such a rigid template. Regardless of my opinion, it doesn’t actually take an excess talent to get a Canadian sitcom if your parent is famous.The kind of work Dan does is so different from what Eugene does that I don’t think much was absorbed. Eugene even said in his Emmy speech that this was the straightest he’d ever played a character, and questioned his career choices.Eugene’s writing has been mostly sketch-based or improvised, and his take on a family sitcom (Maniac Mansion) was pretty poor. Eugene is a better performer than a writer (with the exception of SCTV, although the short form nature of sketches is a different discipline). He’s credited as a writer on the Christopher Guest films, but since it’s improvised it’s not really the same thing.On the admittedly low bar of a family sitcom, Dan Levy seems to know what he’s doing, but his acting is very limited. I have a hard time believing he’ll ever play a character that isn’t a thinly veiled version of himself, while Eugene has a whole sketch series of different characters.I found the comedy on Schitt’s Creek slowly drained away by the final season in much the same way it did on Parks & Recreation (a far better version of the everybody ends up loving each other sitcom). By the end of the series it was just a sappy family show that reminded me more of Seventh Heaven than the satirical sitcom it was trying to be in the first season.
I’d be way more interested if he wasn’t starring in the show. Though AVClub once called him a versatile actor, he isn’t. All he can play is a heightened version of himself (and even when he was in the closet when I knew him, it was still the same persona)—which is fine, a lot of people have become stars for doing just that. But I would like to see him write a project purely for others to see what he can do.
Or not. I love his heightened version of himself, let’s see more of it. We put too much emphasis on artists being multitalented and expanding their range when maybe what we really want is more variations of what we like about them some times.
That’s fair. It’s working for him. But it seems like already he’s popping up in TV movies and M&M commercials just playing “David from Schitt’s Creek”. But if it’s working and people aren’t tired of it, I guess, why not?
Yes calling him versatile doesn’t sound quite right. Though I do think he can portray a complicated character very well – a mix of funny, sad, tragic, happy, aloof, nerdy, generous, selfish, etc. Whether that complicated character is a heightened version of himself IDK but it’s fun to watch. I see what you’re getting at though in terms of I think I’m more interested in him as a creator than just an actor. EDIT: Versatile does work if you’re applying it to Dan Levy, the versatile multi-hyphenate actor-director-writer-producer, as opposed to Dan Levy, versatile actor who has demonstrated a wide range in acting roles (which I don’t think he has)
I definitely agree with that–my personal feelings aside about him as a person, I do think he shows range within the characterization he shows on screen. I just am 90% sure from all we’ve seen that that’s all he can do as an actor–again, which is fine.
Sarah Levy is not a good actor. Also, while I agree Dan is a talented writer, there was a whole writers room working on it.
From what I’ve heard I think a few people from that writer’s room are not all that happy and might speak out soon (especially since Dan has gotten increasingly so much credit for all the writing on the show—and to be fair, that’s partly just how the media works, finding it easier to credit a tv show to one person. Look at the way every show Ryan Murphy produces gets written about with him getting virtually 100% credit for the writing, for good and of course for bad)
Schitt’s Creek (Catherine O’Hara excepted) was a monstrously overrated and overawarded, perfectly nice little sitcom. A bit twee, a bit cheap, too broad at times, but fine. No more than that, and it’s time we stopped pretending it was.
Your mom’s a bit twee, a bit cheap, too broad at times, but fine.
utterly pathetic
Your mom is utterly pathetic. C’mon dude, you’re walking right into these.
I thought whenever Eugene Levy and Chris Elliot were on screen together it was pretty funny. Catherine O’Hara felt like she was in a different show entirely. I cringed every time Dan Levy had a line. The show made me think of Arrested Development all the time, and anything would look bad with that comparison. I can’t believe it won all those Emmy’s, but then I remember that Modern Family won the same awards for years.
I think you misspelled Ted Lasso
Many here prob already know my extremely biased take on Dan Levy and his projects due to a personal connection twenty years back, when he truly was a garbage person (I’ll leave it there for now). But, I admit while I think Schitt’s is fine, and sometimes really amusing, I have been baffled by how it became such a huge international hit. Some of it is being the right show at the right time, but there must be more than that…
I would LOVE to hear that story, but super understand if you don’t want to share it again. I am also a nosy, snarky bitch who doesn’t have any plans this Friday night.
I’ll just repeat what I’ve said before. I only met him a handful of times—he was dating a good friend of mine. He was also extremely emotionally abusive to my friend, and ended up, after one flare up, sending him to the hospital. I’ll leave it there—but I will admit that people change a lot from when they’re 20 or so, I get that. (Although Schitt’s Creek had a huge rep among people I know as being a toxic work atmosphere for crew and extras and mostly due to one actor—when they needed more crew members or whatever, it was often the least desirable choice for people to choose.) But it does make his modern narrative on talk shows, as being as welcoming and inclusive as the show is, a bit hard to take (I’m genuinely just waiting for some of these skeletons to fall out of his closet, but so far I’ve just seen him and his mom talk about how he was bullied as a teen which I’m sure is completely true—I didn’t know him then and only really know him through my friend.)
He seems extremely insincere! That’s sad that SC was considered a toxic work environment.
The irony is delicious though.
I honestly always distrust reports about how something is the most wonderful work environment and how every cast member just loves each other, so this wasn’t shocking!
Except for TNG. That love was real.
“…when he truly was a garbage person (I’ll leave it there for now)“, he said, waiting patiently for someone to ask him to explain further.
The right show at the right time with the right attitude. I can’t speak for everyone, but what raises Schitt’s Creek above most other media these days (save The Good Place, and from what I hear Tad Lasso) is that it loves its characters. Like, genuinely wants the best for all of them, even while embracing their flaws. My first impression of it was disdain for a clear Arrested Development knock-off, and maybe it was conceived that way initially. But what made Arrested Development great fun is that the national consciousness was overall much more mean-spirited. I realize this doesn’t jibe with half the population in the Trump era, but I think the people who love Schitt’s Creek have moved outside of the cynicism that plagued most of the past few decades. Other popular sitcoms from the past like Seinfeld, Friends, and The Office all have various levels of contempt for at least some of their characters. Maybe it’s just the ultimate distillation of Canadianism or something, but I’d never seen anything quite like Schitt’s Creek. I think it’s fantastic.
For me, the sitcoms most similar to Schitt’s Creek in terms of feeling are The Good Place and Parks & Rec. I put those two, along with Schitt’s Creek, in my personal pantheon of Greatest Sitcoms in terms of what the form has evolved to. And I agree, they all clearly love their characters and want the best for all of them, warts and all.
I think it’s also become something of cultural touchstone for the LGBTQ community, both for its matter-of-fact portrayal of Levy’s relationship and the camp icon Moira’s become. Which I think helps people overlook some of the show’s flaws. Because it had flaws.
I stand by my judgement of the show, but I think you are spot on, and that’s something I like about the show (and I think something they realized was working for them and leaned into early on–the early episodes seem to suggest it was gonna be a very different show.) You do get that from a few Canadian comedies (and as a Canadian I either take it for granted or even find it annoying, I admit) even something like Letterkenny.
I can kind of see that. I’ve always loved SCTV and the characters he plays, but in interviews, Eugene Levy often comes off as a smug, arrogant, self-satisfied L.A. industry ass (I don’t know if he actually is), so if that perception is correct, I can see the apple not falling too far from the tree.
That was very much my feeling the few times I met him while he was seeing my friend (and this was before I really knew about his behaviour towards my friend, so I think I was willing to like him). But at that time, to be fair, he was still in the closet (oddly, cuz… I mean…) while starting to make a name for himself as a host on MTV Canada (where he had a following on The Hills Aftershow which I think actually ended up being aired in the US too and, I mean, if you’re gonna come out, shouldn’t you come out at that point, but whatever). He very much seemed like you should feel honoured to be in his presence–he may have changed (though I’ve heard anecdotes since then) but it does make me cringe when I see him act humble on tv.
You mean when he was 17/18?
Maybe this is something you should discuss in therapy rather than making it part of your personality, so that “many here prob already know” it.
It is cheap (I mean, Canadian TV) and twee, sure, but I think it’s much more difficult to pull off what made the show such a success than it seems.
Not gonna lie, that first season or two was a slog. It got better once they reduced Roland’s role a bit along with some other retooling, but even then, I never quite got into it as much as a lot of people.
Yeah, I tried to start this series at least four or five times before it stuck because saying the first few episodes were broad and dull is a mild understatement. I enjoyed it more as the characters developed — especially Stevie — the cast gelled, the town expanded and it became less claustrophobic, but then came Levy’s relationship arc, which just dragged on and on and ON — it got really tedious.It was enjoyable and it finished well, but I don’t find it to be the flawless hidden gem it’s made out to be.
The show never landed for me. I like O’Hara and Eugene but I find Dan Levy to be extremely overrated. He has one character that gets old outside of a sitcom where he plays that character. It was evident when he hosted SNL and the sketches just lost steam. This reeks of both nepotism and tokenism.
I found it just completely head scratching how in the AVClub review of Levy’s SNL episode, the reviewer said (several times) how Levy’s “diverse range” was wasted in the episodes. WHA?
This guy has great potential to get on my nerves. He’s not there yet, but he’s close.
I loved Schitt’s Creek, but Disney paid Dan a boatload of money to create shows and very little has been output of that deal. Now, he’s going to Netflix. Maybe he will be more productive there. But I’ve always thought the charm of Schitt’s Creek was that it was a mixture of father and son’s comedy styles, with them balancing each other out and canceling out each other’s more extreme impulses. So, I will tune in to what Dan does with hope and curiosity, but I also have notice he’s having an absolutely great time appearing on talk shows, walking red carpets and acting in other people’s projects. He’s busy.
It did not air solely on Pop TV. It aired on the CBC.
“Airing solely on Pop TV.”My few tax dollars that went to the CBC disagree with that.
I’m not even a fan, and that drives me crazy. As does the insistence of some Americans I’ve met (and I’ve seen this about Letterkenny) who oddly *insist* that it has to be set in the US for some reason…
And Kinja, or AVC, has struck again–a huge chunk of my posts and replies seems to have been deleted. Oh well…