Amazon Announces Lineup for its First Pilot Season of 2015 November 11, 2014 Seven pilots will be available including hour-long shows Mad Dogs, Cocked, The Man in the High Castle and Point of Honor, half hour shows Down Dog and Salem Rogers, and half hour docu-series The New Yorker Presents Pilot episodes come from acclaimed creators including Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), Carlton Cuse (Lost), Randall Wallace (Braveheart), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Robin Schiff (Are You There, Chelsea?), newcomer Lindsey Stoddart, and Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie) Shows star noted talent including Leslie Bibb (About a Boy), Brian Dennehy (The Good Wife), Rachel Dratch (Saturday Night Live), Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos), Kris Kristofferson (Lone Star), Jason Lee (My Name is Earl), Rufus Sewell (Killing Jesus), and Sam Trammell (True Blood) LONDON - 11 November, 2014 - Amazon today announced the lineup for its first pilot season of 2015 which is scheduled to debut early in the new year exclusively on Amazon Prime Instant Video in the UK, Germany and US. Customers will find a wide-range of genres in this latest slate of pilots—from a close-up look at a family torn apart by the start of the Civil War in Virginia and an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s alternate history of the United States post-World War II, to a satire of new age yoga culture in West Los Angeles and the story of a supermodel fresh out of rehab who is unapologetically trying to claw her way back on to the runway. In addition to these pilots, Amazon will premiere its first docu-series pilot, The New Yorker Presents, which will bring the pages of America’s most award-winning magazine to life. Once again, customers are invited to watch and provide feedback on the shows they want to see turned into full series. The pilots can be viewed through Prime Instant Video on more than 400 devices, including Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii and Wii U, amongst others, and online at www.amazon.co.uk/PIV The seven new pilots premiering early next year will include hour-long shows Cocked from Sam Baum (Lie to Me)and Sam Shaw (Manhattan – TV series), Mad Dogs from Cris Cole (The Bill) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield), The Man in the High Castle from Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), and Point of Honor from Carlton Cuse (Lost) and Randall Wallace (Braveheart). In addition, three half hour pilots will debut including Down Dog from Robin Schiff (Are You There, Chelsea?) and Salem Rogers from newcomer Lindsey Stoddart, as well as The New Yorker Presents, a docu-series pilot produced in cooperation with America’s most award-winning magazine. The programme will include scripted narrative and documentary segments based on the magazine and is produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions and Condé Nast Entertainment. “Our first pilot season of 2015 brings some of the greatest storytellers in the business to Amazon customers with works of novelty and passion. We’re very excited by these shows and look forward to getting customers’ reactions next year,” said Roy Price, Vice President, Amazon Studios. Amazon’s first pilot season of 2015 includes the following shows: Cocked Created by Sam Baum (Lie to Me) and Sam Shaw (Manhattan – TV series), Cocked stars Sam Trammell (True Blood) as Richard Paxson, a family man and corporate lap dog who left his family in rural Virginia twenty years before and vowed never to go back. After some unfortunate circumstances, he is forced to leave the big city and return home to help his family’s gun business—one of the oldest in the country. But no good deed goes unpunished. Older brother Grady Paxson, played by Jason Lee (My Name is Earl), who’s a bachelor, playboy and gun aficionado, isn’t so happy to have him back, and Richard’s liberal wife and two opinionated teenage children are horrified by the world they have been thrown into. Hilarity, epic fights and emotional breakdowns ensue. Cocked also stars Brian Dennehy (The Good Wife) as Wade Paxson, Laura Fraser (Breaking Bad)as Hannah Paxson, and Dreama Walker (The Good Wife)as Tabby Paxson. The hour-long dark comedy pilot is directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Skull Island), and Erwin Stoff (Unbroken), Shaw, and Baum are Executive Producers. Down Dog Blessed with good looks, a winning smile, hippie parents and a Southern California upbringing, life has been relatively easy thus far for Logan Wood (played by Josh Casaubon, I Just Want My Pants Back). In his late 30's, having coasted through romances with countless women and various random jobs, he now teaches yoga to the trophy wives, hot mums and aspiring celebrities of Santa Monica and Venice Beach. And he's damn good at it. But when Logan and his current girlfriend, a successful and attractive older woman named Amanda (played by Paget Brewster, Criminal Minds) who happens to be the owner of the yoga studio, break up, life starts to get more complicated. Down Dog also stars Lyndsy Fonseca (How I Met Your Mother), Will Greenberg (Halt and Catch Fire), Andrea Savage (The Life and Times of Tim), Amir Talai (American Dad), Kris Kristofferson (Lone Star), and Alysia Reiner (Orange is the New Black). The pilot is written by Robin Schiff (Are You There, Chelsea?), produced by Bob Cooper (RFK) and Michael Fuchs (Death in the Modern Age), and directed by Bradley Silberling (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events ). Mad Dogs Mad Dogs is an hour-long dark comedy created by Cris Cole (The Bill), and Executive Produced by Cole, Shawn Ryan (The Shield) and Marney Hochman (Last Resort), Andy Harries (DCI Banks), Suzanne Mackie (All in Good Time), and Charles McDougall (The Mindy Project). Based on the hit UK series, Mad Dogs follows the twisted reunion of a group of underachieving forty-something friends—a mixture of single, married and recently divorced—who are all at different crossroads in their lives. Celebrating the early retirement of an old friend at his gorgeous Belize villa, grudges begin to emerge and secrets explode as their trip becomes a labyrinthine nightmare of lies, deception and murder. Mad Dogs is a twisted tale of friendship put to the ultimate test. As an inconceivable chain of events unfolds, cracks within the group widen before the friends realise that the only people they can trust are each other, the last people they want to be relying on. The pilot stars Steve Zahn (Dallas Buyers Club) as Cobi, Billy Zane (Twin Peaks) as Milo, Romany Malco (Weeds)as Gus, Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos) as Lex, and Ben Chaplin (World without End) as Joel. Mad Dogs is directed by McDougall and is being co-produced with Sony Pictures Television. The Man in the High Castle Based on Philip K. Dick's Hugo Award-winning 1962 alternative history, The Man in the High Castle considers the question of what would have happened if the Allied Powers had lost World War II. Some 20 years after that loss, the United States and much of the world has now been split between Japan and Germany, the major hegemonic states. But the tension between these two powers is mounting, and this stress is playing out in the western U.S. Through a collection of characters in various states of posing (spies, sellers of falsified goods, others with secret identities), The Man in the High Castle provides an intriguing tale about life and history as it relates to authentic and manufactured reality. The hour-long dramatic pilot stars Alexa Davalos (Mob City)as Juliana Crain, Luke Kleintank (Pretty Little Liars) as Joe Blake, Rupert Evans (The Village) as Frank Frink, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa (Mortal Kombat Legacy) as Tagomi, Joel De La Fuente (Hemlock Grove) as Inspector Kido, Rufus Sewell (Eleventh Hour) as John Smith and DJ Qualls (Z Nation) as Ed McCarthy. The pilot is directed by David Semel (Madam Secretary, Heroes) and written byFrank Spotnitz (The X-Files), both serving as Executive Producers. Also executive producing are Ridley Scott and David W. Zucker, with co-executive producer Jordan Sheehan of Scott Free Productions (The Good Wife, The Andromeda Strain), and Executive Producers Stewart Mackinnon and Christian Baute of Headline Pictures (The Invisible Woman). In addition, Isa Dick Hackett will executive produce and Kalen Egan will co-executive produce on behalf of Electric Shepherd (The Adjustment Bureau). Christopher Tricarico (May in the Summer) is also Executive Producer. The New Yorker Presents America’s most award-winning magazine comes to life in this half hour docu-series pilot. The New Yorker Presents is a completely unique viewing experience that features Tony-Award winner Alan Cumming (The Good Wife) and actor Brett Gelman (Go On) in a short film based on a story by Simon Rich (Saturday Night Live) and directed by Emmy Award-winning director Troy Miller (Arrested Development); a poem by Matthew Dickman; a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) about biologist Tyrone Hayes based on a Rachel Aviv article; and an interview with famous performance artist, Marina Abramović, conducted by The New Yorker writer Ariel Levy. Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) is Executive Producer, joined by Dave Snyder (Death Row Stories) and Dawn Ostroff (The Fashion Fund). The pilot is co-produced by Condé Nast Entertainment and Jigsaw Productions. Point of Honor At the start of the Civil War, a Virginia family, led by their West Point bred son, John Rhodes (played by Nathan Parsons, True Blood), makes the controversial decision to defend the South while freeing all of their slaves.