By the end of the year, you will drown in big fat Greekness. There will undoubtedly be a Big Fat Greek video game, a Big Fat Greek Vegas revue, a Big Fat Greek chain of diners, Big Fat Greek Underoos. The Greeks haven't had this much influence over the culture since the Greeks.
That Big Fat Greek Wedding movie is still in almost 400 first-run theaters, having pulled in more than $240 million (on a $5 million budget), and is about to pass Raiders of the Lost Ark as the 26th biggest-grossing movie of all time. The DVD just came out. And on Monday at 9:30 p.m. E.T., My Big Fat Greek Life debuts as a CBS sitcom (which will thereafter run on Sundays at 8 p.m. E.T.). With the entire cast reunited except for John Corbett, who had already signed up to star in his own upcoming show on FX, this is the highest-recognition sitcom since Bette Midler's last attempt. But how long can the Greek streak last?
Unlike Bette, Greek has a good starting point. The movie was, after all, just a long sitcom episode. It was built from a 1996 routine that Nia Vardalos, a graduate of the comedy troupe Second City, did about her Old World family meeting her Hispanic husband. It then evolved into a one-woman play that Rita Wilson, Tom Hanks' wife, saw in 1997. Wilson approached Vardalos and suggested turning the play into a movie. Vardalos was one step head, having already written a screenplay. It took more than four years to get a studio to make and distribute the film, in part because Wilson refused to give the Vardalos role to another actress. Meanwhile, the day before 9/11, Vardalos, Wilson and executive producer Marsh McCall (Just Shoot Me and a head writer for Conan O'Brien) pitched the idea to CBS, which made a pilot and then shelved it. Wilson says she faxed CBS chief Les Moonves the film's box-office figures every week. Seeing those numbers go through the roof, Moonves proposed reshooting the pilot, this time with the film's cast. He ordered seven episodes.
In Vardalos, Moonves got a Hollywood player with a lot more control than she would have had if CBS had picked up the show before the movie came out. Vardalos, 40, after telling the immigrants-shocked-by-America joke for seven years, wants to do a smaller, more character-driven family show that picks up after the couple return from their honeymoon. The family will be a little less cartoonish, not as weapons-grade Greek as it was in the film. "They will be a little hipper, a little less Old World. The risk is, we won't capture the feeling the movie had," says a hyped-up, makeup-free Vardalos, sitting in her dressing room in jeans, a blue button-down shirt and thin, black rectangular glasses. "It's a big risk. I definitely feel everybody will be staring at the pilot and making the decision whether it's like the movie or not. I feel like a fearless idiot, but I think if I write from my heart and what I think is funny--even if the audience doesn't respond to it--I haven't failed."