Viola Davis is expanding her work behind-the-camera, as she’s put a new comedy series into development with ABC. Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions has sold a second project to ABC, single-camera comedy "The Zipcoders".
Written by Marshall Todd (Barbershop), The Zipcoders is about a divorced mother of three who moves her family to the East Side of Austin, Texas, soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in an effort to be closer to her estranged sister. Once there, her teenage son forms a rock ‘n’ roll band, to the utter bewilderment of friends, family and the community at large.
The Zipcoders stems from an original idea developed at JuVee about a group of teenage friends growing up in East Austin who aspire to be a rock band like the Beatles. With the image of a group of African-American teenagers with feathered hair and bell bottoms in the middle of the Deep South, the company met with potential writers. The producers went with Todd who, after doing some research on late-’60s America, found immediate parallels to the issues the country is dealing with today — politically, racially and musically.
“This project gives me the opportunity to tell a story that, while specific to the African-American experience, doesn’t travel in the usual tropes,” said Todd, who will serve as co-exec producer on the series, in addition to writing. “As a parent, I was inspired to tell a story from the dual perspective of parents and children in a world where the rules are constantly changing. Music has always been a passion of mine and to be able to use it to inform this particular narrative was a provocative challenge. I have found in Viola and the squad at JuVee the perfect co-conspirators dedicated to telling the types of stories that entertain while contributing to the larger cultural conversation.”