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Given How the Story Plays Out, This News of a Marley & Me TV Pilot Is Odd

Photo: Barry Wetcher/Twentieth Century Fox

Undeterred by the failure of Animal Practice, NBC is banking once more on the American public’s obvious love for adorable animals, giving a put pilot commitment to a TV adaptation of Marley & Me. Or, seeing as the network also ordered another IT Crowd remake, maybe it’s just getting in on the ground floor of the sure-to-be forthcoming wave of mid-2000s nostalgia. Both versions of Marley & Me have ended with the death of the eponymous dog, and it’s unclear what the story’s move to a serialized medium like television means for the beloved pet’s longevity. Will Marley die in May sweeps every year, only to return each September as if nothing had changed — or, as in Lost, will the show postpone Marley’s fatal case of gastric dilatation volvulus until the show receives a concrete end date? Either way, John Grogan keeps getting those checks.

There’s Going to Be a Marley & Me TV Pilot