Danny Pudi, Alan Tudyk and Christina Kirk have been cast in the DC Comics comedy pilot “Powerless” at NBC, Variety has learned.
The trio joins Vanessa Hudgens in the superhero workplace comedy. All actors cast so far are set for series regular roles.
“Powerless” is set at one of the worst insurance companies in America, but there’s a twist — it also takes place in the universe of DC Comics. The show is about the reality of working life for a normal, powerless person in a world of superheroes and villains.
Danny Pudi (“Community”) will play Teddy, best friend to Emily (Hudgens) at work and her trusted confidante. He spends his days creating time-wasting pranks as a way to make their office, the “least super place on earth,” just a little less “unsuper.” He is repped by UTA, Velocity Entertainment Partners and attorney Bruce Gellman.
Alan Tudyk (“Suburgatory”) will play Del, Emily’s new boss in the claims department. Del has just been promoted, not through any merit of his own, but because he’s the owner’s son. A self-proclaimed “rich, over-educated globetrotting wastrel,” Del is a power-mad disastrous dictator of a boss.
Christina Kirk (“A to Z”) will play Jackie. A fan of superheroes, she has plastered her office cubicle with beefcake shots of super guys. The new claims department boss Del (Tudyk) makes her his personal assistant, and she begins buckling under his unreasonable and impossible demands.
Hudgens, whose casting was announced yesterday, will play Emily Locke, an insurance claims adjuster who loves her job because she gets to help people. She likes to get her work done so she finds herself increasingly exasperated by the disruptive antics of the various superheroes that proliferate in her city.
Ben Queen penned the single-cam, half-hour pilot. The creator of “A to Z,” Queen will reunite with Kirk on the project, which he’s also exec producing, alongside Michael Patrick Jann who will direct. Warner Bros. TV is the studio.
Should the pilot go to series, it would mark the first comedy for DC Comics, which has a slew of dramas on television with CW’s “Arrow,” “The Flash,” “Legends of Tomorrow” and “iZombie” from DC’s Vertigo imprint, Fox’s “Gotham” and “Supergirl” on CBS.
