Amazon Studios announced today that it has greenlit six of the 10 original series tested during Amazon Prime Instant Video’s second pilot season earlier this year. And among the series heading into the pipeline are children’s shows Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street and Wishenpoof! (pictured).
Other series greenlit are the hour-long dramas The After and Bosch, the half-hour dramedies Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent.
Not picked up were children’s shows Hardboiled Eggheads, The Jo B. & G. Raff Show and Maker Shack Agency.
Amazon also confirmed that it has ordered a season two of Garry Trudeau’s satirical political series Alpha House, starring John Goodman, which will premiere this summer. The company did not order a second season of Silicon Valley start-up comedy Betas, the other show from its first pilot season, but says it hasn’t made a final decision on the fate of of the show.
The streaming service has ordered eight episodes of The After and 10 episodes of Bosch, Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent. Amazon will reportedly premiere some of the shows later this year, and others in 2015.
Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, says double the number of customers watched these pilots compared to the first season. Though the commissioning process appears democratic, the company doesn’t reveal much detail about how much impact viewer choice has on its selection process.
Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street is a live-action adventure show created by David Anaxagoras, a preschool teacher and first-time writer who was discovered through Amazon Studios’ open-door submission process.
Wishenpoof! hails from the mind of Angela Santomero, creator of Blue’s Clues, Creative Galaxy, and the Emmy-nominated PBS Kids literacy series Super Why!. Amazon says its original preschool programming is developed with the aid of a board of advisors led by Dr. Alice Wilder, one of the world’s foremost experts in educational and child psychology.
This summer, Amazon will also premiere its first children’s series Creative Galaxy, Tumble Leaf and Annedroids exclusively on Prime Instant Video.