Hot off of Pitch Perfect's television spinoff getting a straight to series order late last year, the upcoming Peacock show has now found its first director for the project. According to Deadline, Todd Strauss-Schulson has signed on to direct the first two episodes of the series, and will executive produce the pilot episode.
This will be the third time Strauss-Schulson and star Adam Devine, who will be reprising his role as Bumper, are working together, as Devine previously starred in Strauss-Schulson’s horror comedy The Final Girls ,and his satire comedy Isn’t It Romantic. Also, Richie Keen will serve as producing director and executive producer across the series and Elizabeth Banks, who starred in the original film trilogy as well as directed the second film in the series, will return as an executive producer. Banks will be executive producing with Max Handelman for Brownstone Productions and Devine, Paul Brooks, Scott Neimeyer, and Megan Amram will executive produce under Golden Circle Films.
The Pitch Perfect series is set to follow Devine's Bumper Allen a number of years after the original film series. In a move to revive his music career, the singer movies to Germany and suddenly scores a major hit in the Berlin music scene. Flula Borg returns as Pieter Krämer, who has gone from German a cappella star to discredited German music manager, who signs Bumper as his client in order to pursue his dreams.
This very comical premise sounds like a pitch perfect (ha!) way to continue this very popular musical franchise. Given Strauss-Schulson's comedy and musical background with films like the sleeper hit Isn’t It Romantic, this director seems like a great choice to start this series off on the right note. Along with this news, Strauss-Schulson also recently wrapped production on his new romantic comedy entitled Silent Retreat.
Pitch Perfect is a franchise that has made over half a billion dollars at the worldwide box office during its original trilogy’s run from 2012 to 2017, so it will be interesting to see how this new series plays to its core audience given that it is focusing on some of the franchise’s fan favorite side characters. While it has no release window or date at this time as they have not started filming the project yet, Peacock is slowly rising up the ranks of the top tier streaming services because of their growing list of exclusive content and this new musical continuation of this beloved franchise looks to continue that trend. For all the latest news on the Pitch Perfect series, stick with Collider.