Two New Producers, Lots of New Projects

LOS ANGELES, April 22 — Ashton Kutcher is no Merv Griffin, not yet at least.
"I don’t have a hotel," Mr. Kutcher said last week, referring to the Beverly Hilton, which Mr. Griffin, the former talk-show host and game-show producer, owns — not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in other assets.
Give him time. For Mr. Kutcher and Jason Goldberg, his partner in Katalyst Films, a burgeoning production company, are two of the busiest television producers in Hollywood. Four years after turning an updated version of "Candid Camera" called "Punk’d" into a hit on MTV, they have shows that are either in development for or will soon appear on four of the five broadcast networks. The first of those shows, "The Real Wedding Crashers," has its premiere tonight on NBC. Loosely based on the 2005 film "Wedding Crashers," the new show features improvisational actors who, with the cooperation of the bride and groom, infiltrate a wedding to create chaos and, it is hoped, hilarity. The show is co-produced with New Line Cinema, which owns the rights to the film.
Meanwhile Katalyst has shot pilots for two other network shows that are candidates for the CBS and ABC fall schedules. The CW network has committed to two additional seasons of "Beauty and the Geek," a reality show that also has been sold in more than a dozen overseas markets.
MTV, having announced that this spring will mark the final season of "Punk’d," is also now presenting "Adventures in Hollyhood," a reality show that follows the exploits of Three 6 Mafia, the Oscar-winning rap group, as it adjusts to life in Hollywood. And MTV is also considering a new hidden-camera game show titled "Room 401."
To top it off, Katalyst is trying to break into feature films as well, with at least half a dozen projects under consideration, including efforts at Sony Pictures Entertainment and Universal Pictures.
Oh, and it also has a contract to develop Internet content for AOL.
"We’re learning the game," Mr. Goldberg said. "We’re clearly running on instinct, but I feel like we’re very much in tune with the culture."
They are not without experience, however. Mr. Kutcher, an actor whose recent films include "The Butterfly Effect" and "Guess Who," and Mr. Goldberg, who has worked as a producer in film and television, started Katalyst with an ample understanding of the ways of Hollywood.
The company, which is based in Hollywood and has 11 employees, already seems to be well down the road toward success. Its biggest payday so far has come from "Beauty and the Geek," a reality competition in which attractive women are teamed with nerdy men on challenges that play to each other’s strengths, like spelling bees and party planning.
The idea was brought to the company by Nick Santora, a television writer, who collaborated with Mr. Kutcher and Mr. Goldberg to develop the show. Among the overseas versions are "The Princess and the Professor" in Norway; "The Doll and the Nerd" in Italy, and "The Beauty and the Genius" in Estonia.
Other of the company’s shows have originated from within. The idea for "Adventures in Hollyhood," Mr. Kutcher said, came after he, like much of America, was enthralled by the exuberance of Three 6 Mafia when the group won an Oscar for its song "It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp."
"First, we punk’d them," Mr. Kutcher, 29, said, targeting the members of the rap group for a gag on the MTV show. "Great characters make great television, and it was obvious that they were unique and had a real genuine quality that’s infectious." After kicking around ideas, Katalyst came up with the scheme of moving the rappers to Hollywood and recording their introduction to the good life.
Katalyst also aims to develop scripted television series, and to that end in 2005 the company hired Karey Burke, a former executive vice president for prime-time development at NBC. Their first effort together is "Miss/Guided," a single-camera sitcom that was brought to the company by Caroline Williams, a writer on "The Office," and stars Judy Greer, who was featured on the short-lived CBS series "Love Monkey" and who had a continuing role as Kitty Sanchez on "Arrested Development."
A pilot episode of "Miss/Guided," which centers on a grown woman who returns to her high school as a guidance counselor, was shot by 20th Century Fox Television for ABC, which is considering it for its fall schedule.
"The Real Wedding Crashers," which NBC has been promoting heavily, is Katalyst’s highest-profile effort yet. The production is far more complicated than that for "Punk’d" and similar reality shows because the hidden-camera pranks take place over several days before a wedding. Various members of the wedding party are enlisted for a task — for example, taking the wedding dress to the tailor — and then become targets for practical jokes.
The show is shot in Las Vegas, in part, Mr. Kutcher said, because Nevada is one state that allows hidden microphones to be used as long as one participant in a conversation is aware that the conversation is being recorded.
And the "reveal," in which the target is made aware that he has been set up, does not take place until the end of the wedding reception, allowing a mountain of cringeworthy events to pile up and creating, at least in the initial episode, a rising level of anger, rather than mirth, among some of the weddings guests.
Whether the show will be extended beyond NBC’s initial six-episode commitment remains to be seen; the production of each episode is as complicated as, well, planning a wedding for close to 100 guests.
"It’s a beastly effort," Mr. Goldberg said.
removed text of the site: www.times.com