Ashley Madison TV Show Series: ‘Thank You Ashley Madison’ Could Be The Next ‘Scandal’ Meets ‘Modern Family’ Plus A Hack


The Ashley Madison controversy isn’t necessarily going away anytime soon. In fact, Google’s Trends list reported that terms like “Ashley Madison list” received 500,000 searches on Wednesday. Folks are even comparing how Google Trends sees the interest in search terms like “Ashley Madison,” “Ashley Madison list,” and “Ashley Madison list search” waning over time.

However, despite how much the searches for the so-called website for cheaters ebb and flow over time, the names “Ashley” and “Madison” will likely not fall off the lips of plenty of people in the future. While “Ashley” and “Madison” might not be as popular as the two names were back when AshleyMadison.com was launched, with a new TV show in the works tentatively titled Thank You Ashley Madison, the website won’t likely be forgotten in the public memory.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Ashley Madison TV show is the brainchild of Steven Marrs and Courtney Hazlett. Marrs is credited with producing the TV show Rogue.

Hazlett is listed as a producer and executive. The Fish Tales listing to her credit and her Ashley Madison (wt) listing are both light on details. With Courtney’s position as the supervising entertainment editor for NBC News’ digital properties, NBCNews.com and TODAY.com, plus her previous celebrity correspondent duties, it sounds like Hazlett has her fingers on the pulse of trendy, famous happenings. Perhaps that’s why the OutEast Entertainment producing partners are putting a female lead in the Ashley Madison TV show, instead of a “typical” male such as Noel Biderman.

The Ashley Madison TV show already has its own IMDB page, with the “wt” next to it indicating that Thank You Ashley Madison is the TV show’s working title. As fierce as Avid Life Media, Inc. has been at going after certain domain names with Ashley Madison in the title, it’ll be interesting to see how that title would pan out for a TV show. However, by then the company could be sued to the hilt and have no more monies left to battle a TV title copyright issue.

With Jennifer Kennedy penning the Ashley Madison script, one would expect the TV show to fall into the comedy vein, considering her former writings such as Punched Up, Ted (not that one about the teddy bear) and The Wilkinsons. Ian Ross MacDonald would join in, a man with a long list of credits.

The Ashley Madison TV show wouldn’t be based on a “stereotypical” man like Biderman, says Courtney, but somehow the fictionalized series would involve a “good mother” who creates an Ashley Madison type of shop wherein she sets up her shingles (online, presumably) to help feed the family. Sounds about right in the day and age of reality TV stars such as those found fighting every turn on Basketball Wives, like when Tami Roman quipped, “I fight to feed my family.”

Sounds like the Ashley Madison hacking will be touched upon, even in a cursory way. But Hazlett posits an interesting question in asking what would life look like if married folks were honest enough to speak about their true desires without needing a hack to prompt some of the truth to come out?

“There are a lot of TV shows doing a great job of presenting marriage storylines in new ways, but what we’re positing here is, what if there is a third lane to run in and what if you were honest about it? What if you didn’t need a hack to have this conversation? Maybe this is where your life just is, and no shows on television are offering that.”

Marblemedia’s co-CEO Matt Hornburg flat out says that the Ashley Madison hacking inspired the script due to the day-by-day drama the hacking unfolded in real life.

“We are in the early stages of developing a scripted series inspired by the site which, given the events from the past week, make the themes explored more timely.”

Given those involved, sounds like a Scandal-type of TV show based around Ashley Madison could soon land on TV screens across the nation — and with the comedic writing backgrounds, it could be a cross between the drama with a whole lot of Modern Family antics thrown in for good measure.

[Image via Ashley Madison]

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