The prospect of seeing an original TV series from the mind of Charlie Kaufman was almost too good to be true.  Alas, after producing a pilot for a comedy called How and Why, FX has decided to pass on the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation. scribe’s potential series, per Deadline.  The show was to star John Hawkes as a man who can explain how and why a nuclear reactor works, but is clueless about life.  The promising cast also included Michael Cera, Sally Hawkins, and Catherine Keener, but apparently it wasn’t up to snuff for the network.  Hit the jump for more.

switch-jackie-brown-prequel-john-hawkes

FX has shown a willingness to go left-of-center with Louis C.K.Louie—which is at turns hilarious and heartbreaking and also exceedingly strange—but its new comedy series outputs haven’t exactly been of the same ilk.  The network recently launched a pair of more traditional comedies, Married and You’re the Worst, but neither garnered particularly positive reviews. FX also passed on Scott Frank's crime drama Hokestarring Paul Giamatti, leaving an untitled Zach Galifianakis project as the only live-action pilot still alive.  That project finished production and will be considered by FX for a possible series order soon.

This is another blow for fans of Kaufman, as the Oscar winner was previously planning a unique, fantastic-sounding musical set in Hollywood called Frank or Francis before it was postponed due to financing issues.  It’s possible he could give that film another shot (he already had a cast that included Nicolas Cage, Jack Black, and Steve Carell), and a film he wrote called Anomalisa is being produced by Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos as a stop-motion animation project.  Or it’s also possible that he could shop How and Why at another network.  He flirted with an HBO series at one point.  Regardless, I just hope we see something new from Kaufman soon.  It’s been far too long.