IFC Orders Second Season of Will Ferrell Satire after ‘Earth-Shattering’ Success of ‘Spoils of Babylon’
“Television audiences haven’t clamored this much for a second season since ‘After M*A*S*H’,” joked Matt Piedmont, very much in the same tone as his tongue and cheek satire, “The Spoils of Babylon.” The show, a comedy that unapologetically pokes fun at literary television mini-series, has been ordered for a second season on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) and will be titled “The Spoils Before Dying.”
READ MORE: Why Orson Welles was a Big Influence on IFC’s Miniseries Spoof ‘The Spoils of Babylon’
“The Spoils of Babylon” aired as a six-episode mini-series directed entirely by Piedmont, which starred Toby Maguire and Kristen Wiig, with featured a slew of other A-listers such as Val Kilmer, Tim Robbins, Jessica Alba and Michael Sheen. It was created to fully embody the type of show it was satirizing, which a fake backstory about how overlong it was and even with a fake author Eric Jonrosh (played by executive producer Will Ferrell) to introduce the adaptation of his fake book.
From IFC’s synopsis: “‘The Spoils Before Dying,’ based on Jonrosh’s (Ferrell) first best-selling novel, will take viewers into the seedy underbelly of the 1950s jazz scene, in a detective story positively buzzing with erotic charge. It follows a jazz-pianist turned private eye who becomes embroiled in a murder investigation that spins out of control and leads him down paths — romantic and otherwise — he never expected.”
It seems the ‘Spoils’ franchise will continue having fun exposing the melodramatic fare that was the 1970s’ mini-series. After all, according to executive producer Adam McKay, “‘The Spoils of Babylon’ defeated the NFL and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ in ratings for adults ages 74-92, so of course IFC is going to keep feeding its hungry audience.
