Alyson Hannigan

Hannigan Gets New Brother in NBC Pilot

(Tuesday, March 30 11:46 AM)

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - With the bulk of pilots for next year having finished casting, a few projects will now get to the business of re-casting — or, as it’s known in showbiz, "going in another direction." NBC’s comedy pilot starring "Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s" Alyson Hannigan is one such project. The show, known in pilot-season parlance as the Untitled Tarses/Wrubel Project, has dropped Eric Christian Olsen ("Dumb and Dumberer") as the male lead in favor of Michael Landes ("Special Unit 2"), according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The show revolves around Andrea (Hannigan), an ex-nerd with a carefully, if rather artificially, constructed life that revolves around her job at a Restoration Hardware-type retailer. Her brother, Ben (Landes), disrupts that life when he brings his anti-authority worldview to his new job at the same company.

Landes starred in the supernatural cop show "Special Unit 2," which aired on UPN in 2001-02. He played Jimmy Olsen in the first season of "Lois & Clark" and starred in the short-lived NBC sitcom "Union Square." Another NBC comedy, "D.O.T.S.," has also undergone some recasting. Khary Payton ("Teen Titans") has replaced Chester Gregory in the pilot, which is about parking-enforcement cops. (The acronym stands for Department of Transportation Services.)