Amazon adds Dick, Van Damme shows

US streamer Amazon has greenlit a trio of comedy series based on pilots of shows it produced earlier this year, including one based on feminist novel I Love Dick and another featuring action star Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The shows will join the SVoD service’s slate of original series in the US, UK, Germany, Austria and Japan next year having been piloted earlier this year.

I Love Dick is based on Chris Kraus’s eponymous novel from 1997 and is set in an intellectual community in Texas, exploring the evolution of marriage and traditional relationship norms.

It is being executive produced by Transparent’s Jill Soloway and Andrea Sperling along with Sarah Gubbins (Ten Aker Wood).

Also on the slate is Jean-Claude Van Johnson, produced by Scott Free Productions and starring martial arts expert Jean-Claude Van Damme as an undercover private contractor. Peter Atencio (Key & Peele), Ridley Scott (The Good Wife), David Zucker (The Man in the High Castle) and Van Damme exec produce.

Elsewhere, Peter Serafinowicz stars in The Tick, which is being coproduced with Sony Pictures Television and is about a superhero who realises his city is being run by a villain long thought dead.

Supernatural’s Ben Edlund is among the exec producers while Wally Pfister (The Dark Knight) directs.

“These pilots were vast in scope, disruptive in tone, challenging in story and sometimes even funny,” said Joe Lewis, head of half-hour series at Amazon Studios.