EXCLUSIVE: Amplify Pictures, the indie studio behind HBO’s Emmy winner 100 Foot Wave and the upcoming Legends for Nat Geo/Disney+, has greenlighted development on LA Native, a new half-hour comedy series written and created by Siena East (Clone High).
The show centers on Genoa Now, an unruly Native twentysomething in Los Angeles trying to make friends and connect with her Native American culture. Chadd Gindin, East’s collaborator on Fox’s animated series Grimsburg, will serve as showrunner and exec produce the project alongside Amplify Pictures.
“We’re in a really incredible time for Native television thanks to years of hard work by Indigenous artists who have fought for our stories to be told,” said East in a statement to Deadline. “It’s so exciting to get to develop a show close and dear to my heart. A Native story about an unlikely hero who makes unlikely choices that my mom is exhausted by. What is this personal? Probably.”
Amplify Pictures CEO Joe Lewis added that the company is “thrilled to partner with Siena on the unbelievably funny LA Native. Breakthrough comedy requires making big bets on incredible new voices and Siena is that and so much more.”
A Choctaw writer and comedian, East’s writing credits include Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Clone High revival for Max and Fox’s Grimsburg. As an actress, she was recently cast in Sterlin Harjo’s FX pilot The Sensitive Kind starring Ethan Hawke and has also appeared in Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls.
The co-creator and executive producer of Grimsburg, which is wrapping up its first season on May 12 and has been renewed for a second, Gindin’s other credits as a writer-producer include the series United We Fall, Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television, Santa Clarita Diet, The Millers and Up All Night, to name just a few.
Best known for the acclaimed surfing docuseries 100 Foot Wave, now in its third season, Amplify Pictures is helmed by Lewis and partners Rachel Eggebeen and Colin King Miller, who respectively serve as Chief Content Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Recently expanding its theater production division, the company earned its first Tony nomination as co-producer of Gutenberg! The Musical!, starring Grammy winners Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells. Directed by Smriti Mundhra, Amplify’s docuseries Legends on the high-stakes world of competitive collegiate Bollywood Fusion dance will debut on Nat Geo/Disney+ later this year. The first season of its new podcast Pretty Sure I Can Fly, hosted by Johnny Knoxville and Elna Baker, and produced alongside SmartLess Media and Campside Media, is out now.