Chappelle's Show to return... Kind of...
 

Dec 5, 1:02 PM (ET)

By FRAZIER MOORE

NEW YORK (AP) - Dave Chappelle is back on Comedy Central - well, kind of. The wildly popular comedian, who last spring walked off his show just weeks before its season premiere, will be on view in four episodes' worth of sketches he filmed before his startling exit, the cable channel announced Monday.

The four half-hours of "Chappelle's Show" will premiere in weekly showings next April, May or June, the network said.

A 2 1/2-minute preview of this never-before-seen footage will be included in "Comedy Central's Last Laugh '05" special, which premieres Sunday, 9 p.m. EST.

Still to be determined is how the sketches will be packaged, since Chappelle's on-stage introductions were never produced. A full season would have been between 10 and 13 episodes.

"It's great material, and we think our audience is hungry for it," said Comedy Central President Doug Herzog, noting that the last original episode of "Chappelle's Show" aired in May 2004. "Chappelle's Show," a raw, satirical comedy show that was both a critical and popular hit, was one of the network's most valuable properties.

The announcement resolves - well, kind of - Chappelle's dangling status at Comedy Central, with whom he signed a deal in August 2004 reportedly worth $50 million for a third and fourth season. But last May, with the premiere date looming for that third season, Chappelle stunned his fans by ditching the show in mid-production.

His disappearance - announced by Comedy Central on May 4 - spurred reports that he had mental or drug problems, but Chappelle later said he was unhappy with the show's creative direction.

"I'm definitely stressed out," he told Time magazine a few days after Comedy Central announced the show was indefinitely postponed. "I'm not crazy, I'm not smoking crack."

He spent two weeks in South Africa before returning home to his farm near Yellow Springs, about 75 miles northeast of Cincinnati. Chappelle, now 32, has since resumed performing live standup.

In the meantime, "Chappelle's Show" has hung in limbo.

"We had reached out several times to Dave's camp and asked, 'What would you like to do?'" Herzog said. "But we never received a definitive response. ... We thought it was time to start unearthing the material we had." He laughed. "It's kind of like Bob Dylan's 'Basement Tapes.'"

come on chappelle come back

At $12.5 Million per half hour, these could be the most expensive episodes of any TV show ever produced! -eek-

Why would they pay him the full amount if he dropped out?

Why support a guy who walked out on his show and his fans??

Yeah, he definetly didn't get that huge paycheck.

Charlie Murphy was on Too Late with Adam Carolla and said they filmed 8 or 9 episodes worth of material. I was hoping we would get more than 4. Well I was really hoping, and I thing the CC executives were as well, that he would come back and finish up.

IIRC, ER costs somewhere in that ballpark per episode. That price may have dropped since alot of the higher-cost cast members have left the show, but it is a one hour show. Then again, Friends cost something like $10 million per episode at the end, thanks to the $1 million per episode salary for each cast member.

Prediction:

The new skits will suck.




See you in June.

Why would the new skits suck? Oooh, I see.. because it would be the assumption that this is forced and you didn't bother to read the thread at all and see that these were all taped prior to him going awol.

Yeah. I see no reason why these will suck.

He did leave because he didn't like the creative direction of the show so maybe that's why he assumes they will suck?

Can't wait to see the MTV Cribs skit.

They might actually be brilliant. Creative types are always unhappy with their work, so maybe they weren't up to his standards, but blazin' for us mortals. :)

I somehow doubt he was at his peak, then suddenly woke up one morning, wigged out, and left town.

We'll just have to wait and see. I see no reason to assume they will automatically be comedy gold.

From what Charlie Murphy has said about these, it doesn't sound like he suffered any amount of bad creative ideas. Murphy said that he loved the clips and hoped to have them see the light of day some time.

It's just that the constant yelling of "I'm rick james, bitch" got to him in his personal life and he left. He didn't suffer a mental break down, he wasn't hooked on drugs (well, maybe just a little WoW) It's just that he didn't like what the show was doing. He does stand up only now and it's great stuff and up to bar to the old material.

He didn't like what the show was doing and stopped.

Bingo...







bitch.

Its his show. He controls the creative control of the show. There's no demand by comedy central to hold him to make his views different because he had them by the horns paying him whatever he wanted.

He didn't like the side effects of the show and what it caused on his personal life. Considering another cast member said that the stuff they produced was some of the best stuff he has done and wasn't dreading it being shown and actually hoped folks would see it some day. I don't think that it's C material.

Add to that the level and high bar that the whole Rick James skit pushed it up to and the level of expectations folks were at after that, I can see how the pressure was tossed on him. But from the proof in the pudding from the others, it doesn't sound like he left because he just simply ran out of ideas.

I'm sure you were going for the "I'm rick james, bitch" with that "bitch" at the end but it came off as rather rude and overstepping to the lines towards a nicely covered personal attack. Especially when we are having a sort of discussion/debate going on here.

charlie murphy!
there's a charlie murphy that occasionally calls the helpdesk I work at
I have to bite my tongue not to laugh

There was a good article in Time Magazine about what happened with Dave Chappelle. In summary, it just said that he didn't like the way his life had become and felt that no matter what he did, his writing was just not good enough for the people paying to see his stuff. His $50 million apparently isn't upfront, but from DVD sales as well. So in his words, he doesn't want to give people "shit".

On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised that he took time off not because he was a raging crack addict but instead because he feels he lost his spiritual core. As you may or may not know, he is a practicing Muslim (or tries to be as best he can). The time that he took off was also to perform the Hajj (which he didn't get to do apparently). He also seems like a pretty laidback guy; apparently him and his family live on a farm in Ohio and not LA or NY as I would have thought.

I can't wait to see the new sketches, but I'm going to be glad when he starts making shows again; my feeling is he's still at the top of his game, and being surrounded by too many Yesmen just got to him.

It was not meant that way in the slightest. Sorry if I offended you.

Hey, I thought it was funny, Fielding.

Bitch.

Well, that's sweet.

Let's hug it out, bitch!

HAHAHA! rotfl



Oh yeah... bitch.

Your unwanted sexual advances come off as rather rude and overstepping to the lines...




...bitch. ;)

Just a heads-up that Dave Chappelle will be on Oprah's show this Friday.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11134248/

Oprah is the reason why Chappelle quit!

http://www.chappelletheory.com