'Call Girl,' 'Shootout' on Tap at HBO

Zap2It.com | March 24, 2008

Darren Star

Pilots from Darren Star, Barry Sonnenfeld get go-ahead

HBO has given the green light to pilots from "Sex and the City" creator Darren Star and "Pushing Daisies" producer-director Barry Sonnenfeld.

Star's "Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl," which has been in development at the cable network since before the writers' strike, marks Star's return to HBO. Sonnenfeld, meanwhile, is executive producing and directing "Suburban Shootout," based on a British series of the same name.

The network has also ordered a comedy pilot called "David's Situation" from the "Mr. Show" team of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl" is based on a memoir by Tracy Quan and will explore the lives of several women who work in the upper end of the sex trade. Star is also likely to direct the pilot, which he's executive producing with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas.

HBO's show will hit the air a while after Showtime debuts the British import "Secret Diary of a Call Girl." That show, which stars Billie Piper as a woman living a double life, is scheduled to premiere in June.

"Suburban Shootout" is based on a British series (which aired on Oxygen in this country) about a woman who moves to what she believes is an idyllic suburb, only to find that two rival groups of well-armed housewives are engaged in a blood feud for control of the town.

Michelle Ashford ("John Adams," "Boomtown") is writing the script for HBO and will executive produce with Sonnenfeld. Laurence Bowen and Philip Clarke, who were involved with the British show, will also executive produce.