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Fox Digital Studio and DirecTV are bringing back original series Suit Up.
After a successful launch last year, the digital comedy effort will debut its eight-episode second season, dubbed Suit Up: One and Done?, on June 19, The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.
Suit Up, which stars Marc Evan Jackson (Kings of Summer, Reno 911!), Barry Corbin (Anger Management) and Eric Nenninger (Malcolm in the Middle), takes place in the fast-paced world of college basketball and the fictional Glory University. Sports personality Petros Papadakis also appears. The second season sees interim athletic director Jim Dunnigan (Jackson) preparing to step down when Glory’s star basketball players are drafted into the European pro league. When he finds out that his nemesis Roger (Nenninger) is behind it, he chooses to stick around.
Season two will first debut on the Suit Up YouTube channel and other online platforms before making its way to DirecTV’s Audience Network early in the first quarter of 2014 to build upon the college football season. When the new season makes its television debut, the eight installments (which hover around 10 minutes) will be grouped into 30-minute episodes.
In preparation for the return of Suit Up, a YouTube channel will launch June 14 with the eight season-one episodes in addition to a 30-second teaser of the season-two trailer. THR exclusively debuts the full three-minute trailer above (the full trailer will be available on YouTube on June 17).
The decision to bring back Suit Up — a 2013 Webby Award honoree — was a no-brainer for all involved. In fact, a second season was greenlighted around the time season one launched early last fall. (Filming wrapped on Suit Up: One and Done? in mid-February.) “We look forward to growing Suit Up into a franchise tree on some level,” Matthew Glotzer, senior vp at Fox Digital Entertainment, tells THR. There are already discussions about expanding the story past season two. “We’re kicking around ideas to see where this goes,” he says.
Being “integrated into a great storyline” illustrating the DirecTV principle was a major point for the satellite provider. “It helps from a branding standpoint, an acquisitions standpoint — and it’s content for our original network,” Jon Gieselman, DirecTV’s senior vp marketing, tells THR.
But Glotzer notes there is a glass ceiling to traditional marketing and publicity efforts — and perks to producing a digitally driven series. “There’s only so much you can do buying your way through a problem with driving audience, and it’s the persistence and agility in the PR and marketing side that allows us to make the thing blossom from the audience standpoint on digital media,” he says. “What fuels that is having characters that are caricature-ish almost in their own right,” prompting derivative materials that “travel very well” on social media destinations like Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
One of the biggest goals this go-around is to grow the audience for the Suit Up franchise. “We want to bring back the audience who favored it,” Glotzer says, “and expand it.”
Suit Up was also a finalist at One Show.
A division of 20th Century Fox’s Fox Digital Entertainment, Fox Digital Studio works with up-and-coming and established filmmakers to create original digital content. Suit Up is one of several branded entertainment productions by Fox Digital Studios; the others are: Let’s Big Happy with Taco Bell and Wolfpack of Reseda with Kia. Other original productions include Shotgun Wedding, Vin Diesel‘s The Ropes and Bad Samaritans.
DirecTV, which recently renewed scripted drama Rogue, airs sports programs like NFL Sunday Ticket and owns two regional sports networks and minority interests in Root Sports Northwest and GSN.
E-mail: Philiana.Ng@thr.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
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