Coming off his big summer, in which HE is the star and not Tom Cruise, Glen Powell is already back at work on his next project, a football comedy series for Hulu called Chad Powers.
While the show was co-created by Loki’s Michael Waldron and Powell, both of whom are also executive producers, the character started with Eli Manning:
As you can see in these set photos, Powell is replicating Manning’s look pretty closely, which he discussed with Manning on The Eli Manning Show. Seeing Glen Powell in an absurd disguise just makes me wish this was a Hit Man sequel, though. Or maybe a series spin-off. I could watch at least eight episodes of Powell playing myriad weird little guys staging weird little hits. Sadly, Chad Powers is not a Hit Man spin-off.
The pilot episode of Chad Powers is co-written by Waldron and Powell, and American Vandal’s Tony Yacenda is directing. The cast also includes Steve Zahn as the coach of a ragtag college football team, and dammit, I’m going to have to watch this show, aren’t I? I’m not particularly interested in Chad Powers—which might be more about how deeply uncharismatic Eli Manning is and how unfunny I find his original “Chad Powers” sketch—but this is too many people whose work I like, I’m going to have to give it a shot. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and this will be like a more farcical version of Everybody Wants Some!!.
Also, Chad Powers is Powell’s first live-action television role since Scream Queens. I am locked in an eternal battle with Ryan Murphy’s TV shows, but Scream Queens was delightful all the way through season one (lost a little steam in season two, though), and that is in no small part due to Powell’s memorably unhinged performance as uber frat boy, Chad Radwell. Hopefully, Chad Powers can get Powell into that comedy zone again. I’d still like that Hit Man spin-off with the weird little guys, but just having Glen Powell do more comedy is a win.
