Molly Shannon to Play Ex-Nun

HBO is developing a comedy about a nun who leaves the church in order to pursue a regular life of straight ballin’. The show is created by “Simpsons” writer/producer Tim Long, and will star Molly Shannon as a grown-up Mary Katherine Gallagher.

Shannon’s character became a nun after getting her heart broken at 18. Now she is an utterly innocent woman in her early 40s who has never had sex and has to discover the modern world in all of its tawdriness. “It’s James Joyce meets Judd Apatow – a female 40-Year-Old Virgin with a huge dollop of Catholic weirdness thrown in,” Long said… It “will be outrageously funny – it’s Molly Shannon, for crying out loud — but it’ll also be a serious look at a woman who’s 40 but emotionally still in her teens and who needs to get wise very quickly,” Long said. [Deadline]

This sounds okay. I like Molly Shannon (I even enjoyed the short-lived “Kath and Kim” with Selma Blair), and even though Long joined “The Simpsons” at the end of the show’s peak, he still has respectable comic chops. But the way I see, Shannon still owes me $11 for Year of the Dog. Any movie with this hilarious image –

– shouldn’t be a depressing melodrama about a crazy woman who leaves society because her dog dies. I want my money back.