Lin-Manuel Miranda Will Star in Freestyle Love Supreme Adult Swim Pilot

By Michael Gioia
19 Jul 2011

Lin-Manuel Miranda
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Adult Swim and Ars Nova announced that they will produce a pilot based on the New York-based freestyle hip-hop crew, Freestyle Love Supreme, featuring group co-founder and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights).

Based on the stage show of the same name created by Thomas Kail (In the Heights, Lombardi) and Anthony Veneziale ("Trauma," "The Electric Company"), the single-camera pilot will star Miranda and Utkarsh Ambudkar ("Danni Lowinski"), with Veneziale and Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan ("The Electric Company").

The pilot will feature original music by Miranda and composer-producer Bill Sherman (2008 Tony and Grammy Award for In the Heights, music director for PBS' "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company").

Jon Steingart, Jill Furman, Jillian Apfelbaum, Kail and Veneziale are executive producers.

The stage version of Freestyle Love Supreme "take[s] the crowd on a non-stop, hip hop improv ride, spinning cues from the audience into instantaneous riffs and fully realized musical numbers."

The group is scheduled to appear at Bumbershoot 2011 in Seattle in September, and has performed at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival, the HBO US Comedy Arts Festival, the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Paramount Comedy UK and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.