Danny McBride Returning to HBO With ‘Vice Principals’
Kenny Powers may have hung up his cleats and jet-skied into the sunset, but Danny McBride is far from done with HBO. The cable network has picked up Vice Principals, a new comedy from the Eastbound and Down star and his co-creator Jody Hill, Deadline reports.
The show will track the goings-on at a high school, with McBride playing one such second-in-command administrator. Vice Principals was green-lit on a straight-to-series order for 18 episodes, which will most likely be split into multiple seasons.
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“Danny McBride and Jody Hill have created a smart, rowdy and unpredictable style of comedy that we can’t get enough of,” said Michael Lombardo, HBO’s president of programming. “The idea of them setting their minds on high school was irresistible.”
McBride and Hill’s Eastbound and Down wrapped up after four seasons last November. After scoring a surprise Sundance hit with The Foot Fist Way, McBride made memorable supporting turns in films like Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder. But it was his work on Eastbound as the raunchy, loudmouth Kenny Powers — a busted pitcher who tries to get his career and life back on track — that cemented his status in the comedy world.
During an interview with Rolling Stone a few years back, McBride explained the origins of Kenny Powers, saying that he and Hill “grew up around these alpha-male rednecks and all these dudes with this crazy confidence that didn’t really have anything to back it up. Kenny’s an amalgamation of the people that we were intimidated by growing up.”