Bad Teacher late for school

LA SCREENINGS: Bad Teacher, the TV comedy spun off from the 2011 Cameron Diaz movie of the same name, has secured a late series commitment from CBS.

Bad Teacher

Hilary Winston’s adaptation of the movie has become the sixth new comedy ordered by CBS for next season, after last week’s orders for The Millers, The Crazy Ones, Mom and We Are Men. Furthermore, Friends With Better Lives is waiting in the wings for midseason.

The move comes as CBS ramps up its comedic output as How I Met Your Mother heads into its ninth and final season this fall. CBS has expanded its Thursday comedy block to two hours to house some of the new shows, alongside its existing two-hour block on Mondays.

Bad Teacher

Bad Teacher is from Mosaic Media and Quantity Entertainment, and will be distributed internationally by Sony Pictures Television (SPT). Community scribe Winston wrote the TV pilot’s script, while the film’s original screenwriters Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg are executive producers, alongside Winston, Jimmy Miller (Bad Teacher, The Other Guys), Sam Hansen and Michael Lasker.

The half-hour series stars Ari Graynor (Fringe) as an “inappropriate, fearless and unapologetic” divorcee who becomes a school teacher to find her next husband. Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars), David Alan Grier (In Living Color), Sara Gilbert (The View, Roseanne) and Kristin Davis (Sex & the City) also star.

For SPT, this late pick-up brings its total Upfronts haul to eight series, with new shows on all of the Big Four broadcast networks. Stupnitsky and Eisenberg are also behind Trophy Wife, an ABC comedy that was picked up during last week’s Upfronts. For a full list of new shows, click here.