Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has reacted to Vince Vaughn’s comments about R-rated comedies , saying that producers don’t know what they want until they see a formula become a success. Vaughn recently said Hollywood producers “overthink it” and have become too risk-averse to gamble on R-rated comedies that aren’t based on a pre-existing IP. Lawrence directs Vaughn on the new crime comedy series Bad Monkey , which arrives on Apple TV+ on August 14.
An adaptation of the 2013 New York Times bestselling novel by cult Florida crime writer Carl Hiaasen , Lawrence describes the series as the sort of show “you don’t see anymore...
banter-driven, R-rated comedies that actually have some real stakes.” “I hope it works,” Lawrence told The Independent . “Because the second one works, everyone wants it.
” Lawrence drew a comparison with Ted Lasso, the hit sports sitcom he developed with Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly. “I can’t tell you the amount of meetings I have now where people say: ‘Maybe you could do something like Ted Lasso ’,” said Lawrence. “I like to remind them, we tried to sell Ted Lasso everywhere and only Apple bought it.
Everyone else was like: ‘What is this? It’s like a 1990s sports movie?’” In Bad Monkey, Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, a former Miami detective demoted to “roach patrol” as a restaurant inspector in the Florida Keys. When a severed arm turns up on the end of a fishing line, Yancy teams up with Miami medi.