3 Other Projects Ben Silverman is Ripping Off For His New TV Show

It took nearly 15 months, one devastating late night disaster and Jeff Zucker's retirement, but Ben Silverman has finally wormed his way back into NBC with a new comedy series. Called Party People, the ensemble project will center on a group of under-employed entertainers who work the children's birthday party circuit. Sound vaguely familiar? Let's take a look at three projects from which Silverman, who famously brought NBC The Office and Knight Rider 2.0, may have drawn inspiration.

· Death to Smoochy

Danny DeVito's underrated 2002 film shed light on the cutthroat world of children's entertainment. Starring Robin Williams as the maniacal and power-hungry "Rainbow Randolph" and Edward Norton as the naive Sheldon Mopes/"Smoochy the Rhino," this box office disaster managed to tie an Irish mob, one Razzie-nominated performance (Williams), a statement about the commercialization of kids' culture and a Nazi rally together in less than 110 minutes. Oh, and it taught viewers that "friends come in all sizes."

· Party Down

Even though the series never gained the live audience that it needed for a third season pick-up, this Starz ensemble comedy nailed the whole "unemployed actors working parties while hoping to make it big" thing. Only instead of catering orgies and private parties at Steve Guttenberg's, Party People will feature actors donning costumes to entertain the offspring of the people who will not hire them in the first place. Probably. Oh Party Down, if only Ben Silverman had envisioned you, maybe you could have landed at a network and saw a longer, more fruitful life. Not that I'm bitter.

· Taxi

And finally, Ben Silverman had Taxi in mind when he formulated Party People because, well, The Hollywood Reporter said that the new NBC comedy will have the tone of a "modern-day Taxi only with with the under-employed grown-ups dealing with kids birthdays instead of shuttling passengers." That almost doesn't make sense. So there you have it.

What do you think of Ben Silverman's latest project at NBC?

[via THR]