This has not been the best week to be actor Josh Gad. The Comedians, his new FX comedy-vérité series on FX with Billy Crystal, debuted last night to some less-than-enthused reviews. The sitcom stars Gad as a boorish, socially inept version of himself; it’s difficult to tell whether that makes charges of his character as irritating and unlikable easier or more difficult to take. But such concerns probably don’t keep Gad up at night. I assume that the actor chuckles to himself while reading the reviews in a small swimming pool nested within a larger swimming pool purchased with Frozen residuals cash. Lukewarm reception for the TV show, shameful mediocrity at the cineplex, Gad will be fine.

A new report from Deadline confirms that the actor’s landed on his feet. Last night, studios fought tooth and nail to acquire a pitch for a musical comedy from Gad and his The Wedding Ringer writer-director Jeremy Garelick. In the sort of scramble industry types truly don’t see every day, offers poured in from Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Fox, and Universal. Seems like a lot of hubbub over a genre that’s still figuring out what it’s going to be and is accordingly difficult to sell. 

It must’ve been the creative personnel attached that caused the mad scramble to snap the unspecified project up; Gad’s a Broadway veteran (he co-starred in The Book Of Mormon with Andrew Rannells, who got a movie of his own yesterday), but the real star-wattage comes from Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, who are handling the music and lyrics for the film, respectively. Menken and Schwartz collaborated on some of the greatest entries in the Second Coming of Disney during the ’90s. The pair lent their magic touch to the earthy, elegant Pocahontas and the dark, exhilarating Hunchback of Notre Dame, teaming up again over a decade later on real-life fairy tale Enchanted. The musical has become a difficult beast to tame, but Menken and Schwartz are old pros. With Gad’s superpowered pipes at their disposal, this could be the rare song-and-dance show that takes off.