Sony Pictures Television has picked up the television and feature rights to Canadian comedian Darrin Rose’s short film comedy One Last Last Heist, with Rose set to write and produce the half-hour TV pilot.

“The short was a test balloon, but not for a heist series,” actor and writer Rose told Playback. “I was actually trying to get a job directing, and so I wrote the short film to get more directing experience. I didn’t get that job – directing a feature – but ended up with this fun opportunity instead.”

The series, like the short,  follows a crew of blue-collar thieves working their way up the criminal version of the corporate ladder while dealing with personal dysfunction. The log line: “An armed robber sets up his heartbroken buddy on a meet cute – during a heist.”

The 10-minute short shot in 2019 – which Oshawa, ON-born Rose wrote, directed, produced and starred in. It extensively travelled the film circuit in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. last year, and picked up numerous accolades. Among them, it was nominated for Best Narrative Short at the Tribeca Film Festival and won the Platinum Award for best dark comedy short at the L.A. Independent Shorts Awards. Rose previously won a Writers Guild of Canada award for the YTV animated series Scaredy Squirrel in 2012.

Rose called his deal “pretty straightforward” after he crafted the TV pitch, and his manager set up a meeting with Sony. “They said ‘yes’ in the room, and three short months of contract negotiation later, we had a deal,” he says.

Rose is best known in Canada as a series regular on the CBC sitcom Mr. D for the entire eight-year run of the show (2021 to 2018). He most recently wrote on Damon Wayans Jr.’s CBS sitcom Happy Together, but is also a veteran in the stand-up comedy world with appearances on CBS’s The Late Late Show and Kevin Hart’s LOL Network. Rose also hosted 54 episodes of the  Comedy Network series Match Game (2012-2013). 

“I had wrapped on Happy Together… at the end of 2018, and wasn’t having any luck scaring up another job. So I decided to write and make the short. We shot it in three days with a bunch of my friends – producer Courtney Hicks, DP Stuart Campbell, and actors Suresh John, Ava Julien and Marito Lopez.”

Rose will produce the pilot with two-time Emmy winner Mike Royce (Everybody Loves Raymond, One Day at a Time) stepping in as showrunner.

“It all started with a little joke I made about why armed robbers always do one last heist, when they have such obvious skills that could be used for something else. Like, if you can hack into the security system, why not just get a job at a computer company? No one will shoot you there,” said Rose.

“I’m not saying that’s a great joke, but that was the initial seed. It made me realize that there was something funny in the reality of a life of crime, that funny things still happen even in the serious pursuit of big heists.”

Rose is repped by ROAR and Morris Yorn Barnes Levine.

Images courtesy of Stuart Campbell