Mr Viral
EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Davis, the nine-time NBA All-Star who plays for the LA Lakers and is best known as AD, is doubling down on the prank TV space.
Davis, who was drafted as the first overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft, has teamed up with the Impractical Jokers crew for a prank show special on TBS.
The Warner Bros. Discovery-owned cable network has greenlit Foul Play (w/t), a docu-style hidden camera unscripted comedy.
It is not Davis’ first meeting with the Impractical Jokers troupe, having appeared on the show, which remains one of TBS’ only original series on air, in 2023.
The special, which was filmed this week, is set to air in early 2025 and Deadline understands that if it goes well, it will be handed a full series.
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The show sees Davis give some of the the greatest athletes in professional sports one shot to score a great prank, or foul out trying. However, unlike other prank shows, Foul Play will let viewers see how everything comes together…and how easily it can fall apart.
Foul Play is produced by Grandma’s House Entertainment, which has previously worked with A-list sports stars in Travis Kelce dating format Catching Kelce as well as, more recently Netflix’s The Trust: A Game of Greed, Bad Woods Entertainment, which was founded by the Impractical Jokers stars, and UTA’s 4.4.Forty Media.
The special — a prank show led by an NBA star — is a perfect fit for the T-Nets strategy of sports adjacent programming. Impractical Jokers, which was a cornerstone of its sister net TruTV, moved to TBS with a new batch of episodes earlier this summer.
Elsewhere, TBS, which airs NBA games alongside sister net TNT, hasn’t greenlit a great deal of originals recently. It launched Sarah Silverman’s Stupid Pet Tricks, based on the classic David Letterman segment, and the second season of The Cube. However, Miracle Workers, which starred Daniel Radcliffe, was canceled after four seasons, as was Rat In The Kitchen, which was hosted by Natasha Leggero. Last year, the network revealed that it was rebooting The Joe Schmo Show, hosted by Cat Deeley.
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