Filmmaker Danielle Sanchez-Witzel will co-write and co-executive produce Up Here, a musical rom-com limited series recently greenlit by Hulu. The project will consist of eight episodes.
The musical romantic comedy set in New York City in the waning days of 1999, following the extraordinary story of one ordinary couple, as they fall in love and discover that the single greatest obstacle to finding happiness together might just be themselves, according to Hulu.
Sanchez-Witzel will share writing and exec producing credits with Steven Levenson (Fosse/Verdon, TV producer; tick, tock…BOOM!, writer) and the wife-husband composer duo Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (WandaVision), with the latter two also writing original songs for the series. Levenson will serve as showrunner, too.
A graduate of NBC’s diversity writing program in the early 2000s, Sanchez-Witzel went on to join the multiple-Primetime Emmy Award-winner My Name Is Earl, in which she wrote several episodes and was promoted to producer, supervising producer and co-executive producer. The series, created, written and directed by Gregory Thomas Garcia, earned Sanchez-Witzel two nominations for the Writers Guild of America Awards.
After My Name Is Earl ended, Sanchez-Witzel stayed at the Peacock Network for several more years to work in other comedies, the BET Award-winner The Carmichael Show, Love Bites, Whitney and 100 Questions. She would then go on to work as a producer in other networks. Her credits also include Fox’s New Girl, The Grinder, LA to Vegas and Rel, and CBS’s The Millers. New Girl got her a nod for production for a Women’s Image Network Award. Early in her career, Sanchez-Wtizel wrote a few episodes for ABC’s George Lopez. And in 2020, she penned the story for the comedy film Like a Boss, featuring Salma Hayek and Tiffany Haddish.
One can expect to see more Sanchez-Witzel streaming projects in the near future. Last year she signed a multi-year deal with Netflix, where she will develop new series and projects and also supervise and exec produce others. Hulu’s Up Here will be produced by 20th Television and Old 320 Sycamore Productions. Additional exec producers include Thomas Kail and Jennifer Todd. Directing will be Thomas Kail.
Casting for the series is currently underway and production is expected to start this summer in the Big Apple.