NBC’s ‘Pride’

Scripts had been written, voice tracks recorded and millions spent for DreamWorks’ animated TV comedy about the animals in Siegfried & Roy’s Las Vegas show. Then, tragedy intruded.

Roy Horn was mauled by a 600-pound Siberian tiger and dragged off the stage during an October performance. He was near death, his prognosis uncertain.

Back at DreamWorks’ facility in Glendale, Calif., executives were confronted with a delicate but inescapable decision: Should production continue on the computer-animated “Father of the Pride”?

“We honestly didn’t know what to do,” says one of the show’s creators, Jonathan Groff. “We were really shaken. We didn’t know how this thing was going to turn out, but we were in this zone: ‘Let’s just keep going.’ “

“Father of the Pride,” believed to be the most expensive first-year TV comedy ever created, arrives Tuesday night at 9 on NBC — but not without a slew of questions over taste, content and decisions made by executives who pressed ahead.

“We’ve had all kinds of challenges and hurdles along the way, and setbacks and disappointments,” says DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg. “But we love the show and we’re very proud of it.”

More than a few laughs are riding on the outcome.

NBC desperately needs new hits as it faces a fall TV season without its signature comedies “Friends” and “Frasier.” NBC is spending more on “Father of the Pride” than on any of its other new shows: $1.6 million for each half-hour episode.

DreamWorks has even more at stake. The company is banking on the show’s success to help entice investors to buy shares of a spin-off animation company that would be headed by DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg, who came up with the idea for the program.

Some advertisers aren’t certain two of Hollywood’s master performers — Katzenberg and NBC entertainment chief Jeff Zucker — can pull this one off.

“They’ve got their work cut out,” says Stacey Lynn Koerner, an executive vice president with the ad-buying firm Initiative.

Besides sensitivities surrounding the mauling, many advertisers thought the show featuring cute lions was aimed at family audiences — an impression reinforced by early clips and ads, not to mention the fact it received funding from the Family Friendly Programming Forum, which supports the development of programs parents can watch with their children.

But the first few episodes are laced with drug references and sexually explicit humor meant for adults.

In an opening scene of Tuesday’s episode, for example, John Goodman’s character, Larry the lion, hurries home to his wife who is “in heat.” He swivels his furry hips and announces: “Big Daddy’s home. … It may be 9 o’clock in New York but right here it’s mountin’ time.”

Sensitive to the growing criticisms, NBC last month amended its on-air promos, labeling the show as “an adult comedy.”

“These are cute, cuddly characters, and you just want to wrap your arms around them and take them home,” Koerner says. “But then they open their mouths, and you don’t know what to think.”

These days, Zucker says, the only kind of animated shows that stand a chance in prime time have a heavy dose of attitude and adult themes.

He concedes that NBC has failed several times trying to bring animation to prime time. But, he says, the network needs a breakout hit comedy.

“We have to take some swings, take some risks,” he says.

Zucker first approached Katzenberg in 2001. At the time, “Shrek” was a monster hit for DreamWorks. Zucker wanted to give the green ogre a TV show, but Katzenberg said no.

Among other reasons, he did not want to diminish the value of “Shrek” sequels by creating a television show.

About a year later, however, he came up with an alternative. After watching the “Siegfried & Roy” show for “something like the 14th or 15th time” in Las Vegas, Katzenberg said he started toying with the notion of a show based on a troupe of animals living in elaborate enclosures at the Mirage Hotel.

“What would it be like to be one of these animals and to raise a family, and live in the Jungle Palace and go to work every day at a place where the CEOs are these two eccentric guys, Siegfried & Roy?” Katzenberg says.

Zucker loved the idea, and by end of last September stars including Goodman and Carl Reiner had recorded several episodes, which had been shipped to a Hong Kong facility for the animation process.

Then came the Oct. 3 attack.

In Burbank, Calif., most NBC entertainment executives figured they should pull the plug. They worried that the mauling would make a satirical look at Siegfried & Roy and the animals seem in poor taste.

Zucker, however, continued to champion the project. Katzenberg hadn’t given up, either.

“Siegfried kept encouraging us not to stop,” Katzenberg says. “He would say, ‘Roy would want you to keep going.’ And during Roy’s recovery, this show suddenly became really important to them.”

Horn and his partner, Siegfried, are executive producers of the show.

As Horn’s condition slowly improved, Zucker negotiated an exclusive prime-time special focused on Horn’s recovery: “Siegfried & Roy: The Miracle.” Hosted by Maria Shriver, former NBC news anchor and California’s first lady, it is scheduled to air Sept. 15.

For a while, NBC executives considered running the Shriver special on the same night as “Father of the Pride.” They changed course after hundreds of advertisers were left cringing in their seats during NBC’s presentation of its fall lineup in May.

At New York’s Radio City Music Hall, the network showed clips from “Father of the Pride” along with excerpts from an interview with a scarred and partially paralyzed Horn on a huge video screen.

“It really gave people the creeps,” says Shari Anne Brill, programming director for the ad-buying firm Carat USA. “You know, the public’s memory is very fleeting, but then they put that guy up there, and they remind you that (he) was almost murdered by the cartoon characters this show is based on.”

Zucker acknowledges that NBC “did a bad job” with the clips. NBC executives said they probably were trying too hard to assure people that Horn was on the mend. In numerous test screenings, they said, not one viewer said they were offended by the show because of the tiger attack.

“It was one of those things that we overthought way too much,” Zucker says. “All the audience wants to do is laugh.”