Woody Allen to create show for Amazon on heels of ‘Transparent’ success

Woody Allen will write and direct his first television series for Amazon, the company announced on Tuesday in a statement.

The half-hour series, which has been ordered for a full season, will be available for Amazon Prime Instant Video customers.

Roy Price, vice president of Amazon Studios, called Allen a “visionary creator� in the statement and Allen said: “I don’t know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this.�

The web giant has been in the midst of a push for original-series productions. Amazon’s series “Transparent� won the Golden Globe for comedy or musical television series on Sunday.

Though he is best known as the writer, director and sometimes star of films including “Annie Hall,� “Midnight in Paris� and “Hannah and Her Sisters,� four-time Oscar-winner Allen began his career in television as a writer on “The Sid Caesar Show.�

He joins an ever-growing list of feature film talent migrating to the medium known as television -- both the kind broadcast through actual television sets and the digitally distributed variety.

Indie pioneer Steven Soderbergh directed the entire 10-episode first season of the Cinemax series “The Knick,� which will return to the pay cable network later this year. He is also executive producer of the upcoming Amazon series “Red Oaks,� directed by Sundance favorite David Gordon Green.

Meanwhile David Lynch, whose last film “Inland Empire� received a limited release in 2006, will revive his cult series “Twin Peaks� for Showtime next year.

Though the prolific Allen has continued making films at an enviable pace of one to two a year, he’s often had to turn to international sources of finance, requiring him to move beyond his beloved New York City for settings like Barcelona, Spain; Rome; and London.

Still, it’s an odd pairing. Allen is an unrepentant Luddite who still bangs out screenplays on a manual typewriter, while Amazon has since its founding in 1994 radically disrupted traditional book publishing and presented a serious threat to brick-and-mortar retailers of all kinds.

And following the success of “Transparent,� easily one of last year’s most praised new series, Amazon is considered a major upstart in the world of television, nipping at the heels of online content provider Netflix as well as “prestige TV� outlets like HBO.

The Amazon deal also marks a professional triumph for Allen, who found himself once again at the center of controversy in 2014 when estranged daughter Dylan Farrow revived claims he sexually molested her as a child in an op-ed in the New York Times.

Though Cate Blanchett won an Oscar for her role in Allen’s “Blue Jasmine� in March, his latest film “Magic in the Moonlight,� released in July, was a critical and commercial disappointment.