Amazon debuts drama pilots

Amazon has released 10 new pilots, including its first pair of drama projects, via its VoD services in the US and UK.

The firm premiered its first pilots in April and has now released another batch available to watch for free on Amazon Instant Video service in the US and LoveFilm in the UK.

Shows include crime drama Bosch, based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels, and survival story The After from writer and director Chris Carter (The X-Files).

Comedy trio Mozart in the Jungle, from writer and director Roman Coppola (Moonrise Kingdom); family-focused Transparent, from Jill Soloway (Six Feet Under); and The Rebels, which explores the life of a woman who becomes owner of a football team after her husband’s death, will also be available.

On the kids’ front, Amazon is launching live-action series Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street, from David Anaxagoras, as well as animated shows Hardboiled Eggheads, from Duane Capizzi, and The Jo B & G Raff Show, from Josh Selig (The Wonder Pets).

Joining the children’s pilots is inventor series Maker Shack Agency, which was created with production company Electus, and Wishenpoof!, from Angela Santomero (Blue’s Clues, Creative Galaxy).

It is Santomero’s second Amazon Studios pilot, with Creative Galaxy currently in production and set to be available on Prime Instant Video this year.

Customers can watch the pilots online and on mobile devices, games consoles and smart TVs, with viewers again helping to decide which ones will be turned into full series.

Amazon Studios’ first pilots debuted last year. Having received 5,000 scripts from 111 different countries, the company’s LA-based studio arm selected 14 pilots and took five to series, comprising two comedies (Alpha House and Betas) and three children’s shows (Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleaf).

Since its launch in November 2010, Amazon Studios claims it has received more than 20,000 movie scripts and 6,000 series projects for consideration.

In related news, Amazon has signed a content licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution that will make its Prime Instant Video the exclusive online-only subscription home for period drama The Americans.

The series, which features married KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. in the early 1980s, will become available to subscribers along with comedies How I Met Your Mother, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The League, Louie and Archer.

All five shows will be become available for streaming via Prime Instant Video in March.