Worldwide Pants Incorporated

From Freepedia

Worldwide Pants Incorporated is a television production and film production company owned by comedian and talk show host David Letterman. Current television productions include:

• The Late Show with David Letterman (1993-present)
• The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2004-present)

The company headquarters are in the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City. The president and CEO is Rob Burnett; Peter Lassally is a senior vice president.

Contents 1 Past television productions 2 Film production 3 Trivia 4 External links and sources

Past television productions

The first Worldwide Pants production was Late Night with David Letterman, produced in partnership with NBC and Carson Productions.

Subsequent productions for CBS include:

• The Building (1993)
• The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder (1995-1999)
• The Bonnie Hunt Show (1995-1996)
• Welcome to New York (2000-2001)
• The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999-2004)
• Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005)

The company also produced The High Life (1996) for HBO and Ed (2000-2004) for NBC.

In April 2005 the Sci Fi Channel announced Barbarian Chronicles, a half-hour animated ensemble comedy from Brendon Small, which will be produced by Worldwide Pants.

A 2002 Forbes article comments on the approach Letterman takes for Worldwide Pants television productions:

Letterman's approach is to nurture an idea with seed money from his production company, then get someone else to pay for the rest of it. He isn't particularly hands-on once the programs get past the initial stages, but his imprimatur carries weight with network buyers. "They've got a point of view about everything they do," says Chris Albrecht, president of original programming at HBO. "These guys are making television every night and have been for a long time. You feel more comfortable with them."

Film production

The company has produced its first film, a movie prequel to Strangers with Candy, also called Strangers with Candy. The film had its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, within the "Park City at Midnight" category. Warner Independent Pictures subsequently signed up as North American distributor of the film, scheduling a limited release of the film in October 2005.

Trivia

The Worldwide Pants logo following "The Late Show With David Letterman" is always accompanied with a voiceover, a random one-liner usually about pants. Examples: "Nice pants, Pepe", "Time for pants!", "Take off the pants, Penny".

External links and sources

• Worldwide Pants Incorporated at the Internet Movie Database
• Summary of the company, from Hoover's via Yahoo!
• Celebrity 100 article about Letterman and Worldwide Pants, from a July 2002 Forbes article
• Who Ever Said Comedy Had To Be Fun?, from a May 2003 Fast Company article
• SCI FI Reveals New Series, including Barbarian Chronicles
• What’s Edd Hall doing these days after leaving The Tonight Show?, citing Hall's graphic design work, from American Profile magazine
• Sound clips of some Worldwide Pants logo voiceovers, from a fan's website