Bazinga! spinoff casts young Sheldon
CBS has officially given a series order for The Big Bang Theory spinoff Young Sheldon, Variety has learned. The half-hour single cam, currently with an unspecified number of episodes ordered, will premiere in the 2017-18 season.
Created by Chuck Lorre and Steven Molaro, the series follows The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper at age nine, living with his family in East Texas and going to high school.
Jon Favreau is directing and executive producing the first episode of the series, which stars Iain Armitage as nine-year-old Sheldon Cooper – played by Jim Parsons on Big Bang – as well as Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Raegan Revord and Montana Jordan.
At just eight years old, Armitage's resume is quickly building. The pint-sized triple-threat is currently starring on HBO's Big Little Lies, playing Shailene Woodley's on-screen son. He also had a guest role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and made an appearance on Steve Harvey's NBC kids competition show Little Big Shots.
Aside from his on-screen credits, Armitage – who is an avid Broadway fan, thanks to his father who is a Tony-nominated actor – has built a following as a theatre critic and has become a sort of Internet star with his short video reviews recently going viral.
Armitage will star in the potential series that will revolve around Sheldon, the idiosyncratic and neurotic genius, as a youth growing up in Texas. The character's family and Texan childhood have often been referenced on The Big Bang Theory.
The Big Bang Theory showrunner Steve Molaro wrote the pilot script. He will exec produce, along with The Big Bang Theory creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, plus Parsons. Warner Bros TV, which produces the original sitcom, is the studio.
The spinoff is not the only news to come from The Big Bang Theory world. As negotiations continue to for a two-year renewal for the original show, Variety exclusively reported that stars of the flagship sitcom are taking a paycut so that Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch, who are seeking parity, will secure raises.
Though The Big Bang Theory is a whopping success, ranking as primetime's top comedy for most of its run and raking in more than US$1bil (RM4.4bil) in syndication revenue, the sitcom is expensive: close to US$10mil (RM44.4mil) per half-hour episode. So, expanding on the franchise with a spinoff makes sense, especially with young, fresh faces who don't cost much – yet.
While The Big Bang Theory is looking at two more seasons, CBS is still looking to continue relationships with the flagship's stars – Parsons is an executive producer on this spinoff, and Johnny Galecki also had a comedy pilot greenlit at the network this season. – Agencies