Golden Globe winner Sacha Baron Cohen has teamed up with King of the Hill creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels to develop a family-friendly animated comedy special titled Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth. The project is expected to make its debut on Cartoon Network and HBO Max.
“This pitch was so hilarious; we just knew the HBO Max audience needed to get a dose of this original brand of storytelling,” Head of kids and family programming at Warner Bros, Amy Friedman said in a statement (via The Hollywood Reporter). “Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth is a perfect pairing of comedy and satire, and no one does that combination better than Sacha, Greg, Mike, and Michael. This unique project will breathe new, hysterical life into the nonsensical Chelmic wisdom that originated from this imaginary city of folks who aren’t quite the sharpest tools in the shed.”
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Chelm: The Smartest Place on Earth will be narrated by Cohen from a screenplay written by Michael Koman, based on a story being developed by Cohen, Judge, and Daniels.
Set in the mythical Town of Fools and originally told in Yiddish, the special “shares the absurdist humor and interpretive questioning that is a nod to Jewish intellectual traditions,” reads the synopsis. “It will present a fresh take on the silly antics and exaggerated conflicts of the town, while also preserving the essence and heart of the classic folktales.”
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Executive producers are Cohen, Judge, Daniels, Koman, and Dustin Davis. It hails from Bandera Entertainment which is Judge and Daniels’ newly-formed animation company.
