NBC Developing TV Pilot Based on Leslye Headland Play Assistance

Leslye Headland’s comedy Assistance, which premiered at Playwrights Horizons earlier this year, will make the leap from stage to screen with a new TV pilot deal, Deadline reports. NBC will develop the play—a darkly comic story about a naïve assistant and her monstrous boss—into a single-camera comedy, with Headland writing and Will Ferrell, Jessica Elbaum, Owen Burke and Adam McKay producing.

Headland’s sharp comedy follows Nora, a newcomer to the headset-wearing populace working for the powerful Daniel Weisinger, an unseen boss whose extravagant antics bear resemblance to movie honcho Harvey Weinstein (for whom Headland has previously worked). The Weinstein Company recently adapted Headland’s 2010 play Bachelorette into a movie starring Kirsten Dunst and Lizzy Caplan.

Assistance ran off-Broadway from February 3 through March 11, and starred Virginia Kull, Michael Esper, Sue Jean Kim, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Amy Rosoff and Bobby Steggert.