Breaking news: Netflix is getting back into late-night talk.
Building on the success of his week-long “pop-up” talk show Everybody’s in LA this past Spring, John Mulaney will host a new live weekly talk show for the streamer in 2025.
Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria announced the news this morning at Bloomberg Screentime in Los Angeles.
“I’m really excited about it,” Bajaria told the crowd at the industry event. “I mean, John Mulaney, hello. So we have a long relationship with John, obviously, and we have done his stand up specials and during Netflix is a Joke Festival he did a live talk show called Everybody’s in LA. and I was there at a couple of the tapings, and it was just so bold and original and fresh and then unpredictable. And I think it’ll be really fun to get to do a live show with him.”
Mulaney himself has touched on how gratified he he was by the positive response to Everybody’s in LA in the past. “Most of the comedy I’ve done is actually about external topics and not about my own life or psyche or whatever; it was never about my personal life,” he reflected last Spring. “To me, I mainly make fun of TV shows and random things I’ve seen. So this show being entirely external, in a way in the end becomes the most personal thing you can do.”
Everybody’s in LA notwithstanding, late-night style shows have proven to be the one big nut Netflix has failed to crack.
Despite past efforts with proven talent like Hasan Minhaj, Chelsea Handler, and Joel McHale, none have resonated with viewers on the order of the streamer’s more traditional fare.
Bajaria conceded as much, saying “I think we have to continue to be bold and take risks and swings. And I think it would be too easy and too safe to go, ‘oh, well, talk hasn’t worked, so let’s not try this thing.”
There’s no word yet on which day of the week the streamer is targeting for live weekly series, nor when it will premiere beyond “early 2025.”
Mulaney is attached to the Broadway play All In: Comedy About Love, penned by his former SNL colleague Simon Rich through early January. He’s also set to host Saturday Night Live‘s pre-election episode on November 2nd alongside musical guest Chappell Roan
AMDG