Reba McEntire
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The Queen of Country is reuniting with NBC.
Reba McEntire, fresh off her run as a coach on NBC’s The Voice, will star in an untitled comedy that has earned a pilot order at the network. The multi-camera vehicle will reunite McEntire with former Reba showrunner Kevin Abbott, who is set to pen the script for the project.
The potential series revolves around Reba, who inherits her father’s restaurant and is less than thrilled to discover she has a new business partner in the half-sister she never knew she had.
Abbott, in addition to his five-year run as the showrunner on The WB/CW’s Reba, is a comedy veteran whose credits also include Last Man Standing, Roseanne, The Golden Girls and working with McEntire on her former ABC half-hour, Malibu Country.
Abbott reunites with former Reba exec producers Michael Hanel and Mindy Schultheis on the NBC McEntire comedy with Julie Abbott also on board in the same capacity. The multicam is produced in-house by Universal Television.
The McEntire comedy is NBC’s first pilot order of the 2024 season impacted by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. As a result of production delays, many networks pushed new series that were developed for the 2023-24 season to the 2024-25 cycle. NBC, for example, launched only Found and The Irrational during the strikes and this month launched the Jon Cryer vehicle Extended Family, with drama Dr. Wolf and mockumentary St. Denis Medical already earmarked for the 2024-25 season. That would be when most pilots being ordered at this time of year would typically be picked up for, but with so much inventory already locked in, NBC, ABC and CBS are all expected to forgo millions of dollars in producing pilots amid a larger cost-cutting landscape.
McEntire is a proven star and TV draw, an important element as broadcast networks and streamers alike look for broad programming that can not only break through a crowded landscape but also travel globally.
