Deadline has announced that FX is putting into development a half-hour comedy series from director/executive producer Randall Einhorn (“Wilfred”), based on the novel Texts From Bennett by Mac Lethal, a rapper from Kansas City.
BUY THE BOOK ON AMAZON: Texts from Bennett
Texts from Bennett tells the story of Bennett, Mac’s 17-year-old white wannabe gangsta cousin, who claims to be 13 percent black and says he speaks “da female language.” Bennett and his mom, Mac’s pill-popping Aunt Lily, fall on hard times and lose their home, so Mac opens up his Kansas City suburban home to them. They are family, after all. The problem? Mac’s pretty, WASPy, uptight girlfriend can’t quite seem to handle the newcomers:
So as his once-peaceful household gets completely crazy, Mac learns that wanna-be-Crips are thicker than water, that his little cousin–flawed, irreverent, and basically a Saturday morning cartoon gone horribly wrong–has become his mentor, and that he really has no idea what’s up with girls.
Texts from Bennett started life on Tumblr, where Mac Lethal began chronicling the texts he received from his cousin. Mac notes: “These are text messages I exchange with my 17-year-old cousin Bennett. He is a white guy that thinks he’s a crip, is currently unemployed, has a girlfriend named Mercedes, and is one of the most unintentionally funny and brilliant souls on the planet.”
The book, however, is more than just a collection of Bennett’s texts; Mac Lethal weaves the texts into a story. It will be interesting to see how Einhorn will turn this text-message based novel into a sitcom.
Photo credit: Texts From Bennett Tumblr
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