Fox Developing 'Partridge Family'-Like Musical Comedy 'An American Band

By Lesley Goldberg via The Hollywood Reporter on 10/5/18

Fox is looking to find the next Partridge Family.

The network has handed out a script order (with penalty) to An American Band, a single-camera comedy about the harmonic and discordant adventures of the Wyldes, a diverse and dysfunctional Northern California family that can’t get a single thing right with each other, except for the music they've been making for the past 25 years as a multigenerational family band.

Jay Lacopo (Fox's short-lived Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life) will pen the script and exec produce alongside the Jackal Group's Gail Berman and Joe Earley. The comedy is a co-production between 20th Century Fox TV and the Jackal Group, the latter of which also produced Cooper Barrett and The Rocky Horror Picture Show live edition for the network.

The comedy has parallels to ABC's The Partridge Family, which was based on the real-life musical family The Cowsills and their band in the 1960s and '70s.

An American Band arrives as Fox is poised to become an independent broadcast network after seeing its studio, 20th TV, become a Disney-owned property. This development season, the so-called "New Fox" has committed to buying half its development from outside studios and half from 20th TV.

 Lacopo is repped by WME and Jackoway Tyerman.