Sharon Horgan is squeezing two more projects into her jam-packed schedule. Deadline confirms the “Catastrophe” star and co-creator will direct her first feature film, and is teaming up with “Why Him?” writers John Hamburg and Ian Helfer on another Amazon series. This is on top of the three TV projects she has in development (“Women on the Verge,” “Happy AF,” and “Next Week’s News”), the other series she created/writes/produces (“Catastrophe,” “Divorce,” “Motherland”), and her acting career — seriously, does this woman ever sleep?
Horgan will helm “The New World” for Focus Features. Based on Chris Adrian & Eli Horowitz’s book of the same name, the “San Junipero”-reminiscent film is about a couple separated by the husband’s death. “Jane’s husband Jim has just died — or, not quite, as he had assigned his head to be frozen with a shadowy organization that promises to do away with mortality forever,” the synopsis reads. “Awake in a bucolic retreat – an afterlife of sorts – Jim learns that the cost of eternal life is higher than he ever could have imagined. Meanwhile, stranded in the realm of the living and reeling from the loss of her husband, Jane sets out to get back his head.”
This marks Horgan’s debut as a feature director. She previously wrote and directed short film “The Week Before Christmas ” for the UK’s Sky One channel.
Sarah Ruhl (“My Life on the Road”) will pen “The New World.” Olivia Wilde and Alicia Van Couvering are producing.
Amazon has given a script-to-series commitment to Horgan’s new show, an untitled comedy that she’ll also star in. Written by Horgan, Hamburg, and Helfer, the project “centers on a socially awkward, broke, single woman (Horgan) who launches a self-help company and recruits a handsome former male gymnast (Billy Magnussen, ‘Ingrid Goes West’) to be the face of it.”
Horgan will EP the series with Clelia Mountford via their production company, Merman. Horgan and Merman are currently under an overall deal with Amazon Studios.
Horgan has received an Emmy nod and a BAFTA Award for writing “Catastrophe.” The Amazon series follows couple Sharon (Horgan) and Rob (Rob Delaney) as they build a family and life together after a one-week tryst results in a pregnancy. The comedy will return for Season 4 later this year. Horgan also created series “Divorce” and “Pulling” and co-created “Motherland.” Her other producing credits include “Bliss” and “Pillow Talk.”
On the acting front, Horgan most recently lent her voice to animated shows “Disenchanted” and “BoJack Horseman,” and appeared alongside Magnussen in “Game Night.”
