The upcoming third season of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show is apparently only half-baked.
Work on the hugely anticipated new season of Dave Chappelle’s sketch show is behind schedule due to its 31-year-old ringleader’s illness and lack of new material from his writing staff, according to the New York Post.
The new season was supposed to premiere Feb. 16. It will now begin airing sometime in late April or May, per the Post.
“Dave–and his entire production crew for that matter–got a bit of a late start on writing season three,” network spokeman Tony Fox told the newspaper.
Chappelle has reportedly been laid up with a nasty flu bug, adding to delays brought on by the lack of written material so far for season three. The Emmy-nominated comedy is currently on hiatus for the holidays and will resume production in January.
Last week, Paramount pushed back the season 2 DVD release–which had been slated to hit stores Feb. 8 to coincide with the new TV season–presumably due to the production slowdown. No new release date for the DVD has been set yet.
There was no immediate comment Monday from Comedy Central or Chappelle’s publicist.
Since the offbeat sketch show debuted in January 2003, it has steadily built a large following. By the end of season two, the half-hour show was often pulling in more than 3 million viewers. The DVD release of season one currently ranks as the all-time top-selling TV show on DVD.
In August, Chappelle reupped with Comedy Central in a massive two-year deal, valued at $50 million by the Hollywood Reporter. The deal also set a new Industry precedent–reportedly giving the funnyman a large cut of backend DVD sales.
In addition to his gig at Comedy Central, Chappelle had been working on a book for Hyperion. No word on the book’s status; there’s also no word on the rumored movie deal with Paramount for Chappelle to portray Rick James in a biopic.
Prior to work on his new TV season, Chappelle had been overseeing a feature film/DVD project combining sketch comedy with footage from a Brooklyn block party filmed in September that featured a reunited Fugees. A 10-person crew, directed by Michel Gondry, captured the Chappelle-conceived event.