Fox’s “Bloom County” animated series has signed “The Simpsons” writer Tim Long as co-showrunner on the project, Variety has confirmed.
Long will write, executive produce and showrun the comedy, which is still in the development stage at Fox, alongside original “Bloom County” comic strip creator Berkeley Breathed.
Per Fox, “Bloom County” centers on a collapsed lawyer, a lobotomized cat and an overly-carbonated penguin immigrant living in the world’s last boarding house in the world’s most forgotten place deep in the dandelion wilds of FlyWayThe@%!#OVER country. To wit, today’s America at a glance.
The animated series hails from Fox Entertainment and its animation studio Bento Box Entertainment, along with Miramax, Spyglass Media Group and Project X Entertainment.
In its original form, “Bloom County” began as “The Academia Waltz,” which appeared in Breathed’s student newspaper at the University of Texas, The Daily Texan. Soon after, The Washington Post recruited Breathed to do a nationally syndicated strip, which led to the birth of “Bloom County.” The satirical comic debuted in 1980, appearing in more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide and selling millions of compilation books, until Breathed ended it in 1989.
Breathed followed up “Bloom County” with the Sunday strips “Outland” and “Opus,” which both featured “Bloom County” characters. In 2015, Breathed started posting new “Bloom County” strips via Facebook on an almost daily basis.
Five-time Emmy winner and 14-time nominee Long is a veteran writer and producer for Fox’s “The Simpsons.” He also wrote the 2020 film “The Exchange,” directed by Dan Mazer. Off the screen, Long’s writing has been featured in The New York Times and The New Yorker.
He is repped by CAA and Artists First.