Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Bad Monkey’ Renewed For Season 2 By Apple; Production Moving To LA With Vince Vaughn Back As Yancy
Apple TV+ has given a Season 2 renewal to breakout comedy Bad Monkey, from developer, executive producer and showrunner Bill Lawrence, star/executive producer Vince Vaughn and Warner Bros. Television where Lawrence is based.
The pickup comes more than a month after the Season 1 finale of Bad Monkey was released. I hear the delay was largely due to logistics related to relocation. In a rare good news for California production amid the recent exodus, Bad Monkey will be moving from Miami and the Florida Keys to the Los Angeles area in Season 2, sources tell Deadline. I hear the move was important to LA-based Vaughn, and the crew also faced a lot of weather-related challenges while filming Season 1.
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Since Bad Monkey is an adaptation of Carl Hiaasen’s work, which is synonymous with Florida, there will be pickup shoots in the Sunshine State, I hear.
Like Season 1, which was based on Hiassen’s book Bad Monkey, Season 2 will center on Andrew Yancy (Vaughn), a former detective with the Miami Police Department who solves murders while working as a health inspector in the Keys.
As Lawrence told Deadline in October, the original plan was to base Season 2 on Hiaasen’s other novel featuring Yancy, Razor Girl, with an easter egg even planted in Bad Monkey‘s opening credits.
That has since changed as showrunner Lawrence convened the writers room last month, with comedy veteran Adam Sztykiel, who penned an episode in Season 1 as a consulting producer, named head writer to support Lawrence who is juggling several other series, including Apple’s Shrinking, HBO’s Steve Carell comedy, the Scrubs reboot and the likely Season 4 of Ted Lasso.
Season 2 will now be original work, which will continue to be influenced by Hiaasen.
“I hope that people know that Carl Hiaasen is an idol of mine and an inspiration for me as a writer,” Lawrence said. “To get to go on telling his story with Vince Vaughn and this great cast, at least the characters who are still alive, is very exciting. I’m very thankful to our partners at Apple TV+ and Warner Bros, as well as the entire team that helps bring this show to life.”
It is unclear which other characters besides Vaughn’s Yancy would return as most story arcs were wrapped in the Season 1 finale but the odds are that some will be back.
“Anybody that’s still alive, that people responded to, we’re going to figure out a way that they exist in our world — or at least cruise through,” Lawrence said in the finale postmortem interview with Deadline, which also explained why the monkey wasn’t bad in Season 1.
The Season 1 ensemble cast also includes L. Scott Caldwell, Rob Delaney, Meredith Hagner, Natalie Martinez, Alex Moffat, Michelle Monaghan, Ronald Peet, Jodie Turner-Smith, with special guest star John Ortiz and guest stars Zach Braff, Ashley Nicole Black, Scott Glenn and Charlotte Lawrence in her television debut.
“Since Bad Monkey first made its debut on Apple TV+, this highly entertaining series became an instant fan-favorite,” said Matt Cherniss, head of programming for Apple TV+. “Led by the incomparable Vince Vaughn as ‘Andrew Yancy,’ alongside a brilliant ensemble cast, we can’t wait for everyone to experience more hilarious, sun-soaked, beachy misadventures from the mind of Bill Lawrence as the temperature rises even further in the next chapter of this engrossing murder-mystery.”
Hailing from Warner Bros. Television, Bad Monkey is developed by executive producer and showrunner Lawrence through his Doozer Productions. Jeff Ingold, Matt Tarses, Marcos Siega, Vaughn and Liza Katzer are also executive producers.
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