Amy Poehler’s ‘Difficult People’ picked up by Hulu

LOS ANGELES — Hulu has placed a straight-to-series order for “Difficult People,” a half-hour comedy from executive producers Amy Poehler (“Parks & Recreation”) and Dave Becky (“Louie”).

Production is set to start next year. Hulu has not set a premiere date or disclosed the number of episodes for “Difficult People,” which stars Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner (both of Funny or Die and Fuse TV’s “Billy on the Street”).

The original series is the first collaboration between Hulu and Universal Cable Prods. “Difficult People” previously had been in development at NBCUniversal’s USA Network.

Story revolves around best friends living in New York City — with their behavior landing them in awkward situations. Klausner wrote the pilot and will also serve as an executive producer for the series.

“I tend to enjoy funny people creating and starring in comedy programs, and Julie and Billy are the funniest around,” Poehler said in a statement.

“Difficult People” joins Hulu’s slate of original programming, which includes recent straight-to-series pickup orders for comedy series “Casual” from Jason Reitman and “11/22/63,” based on Stephen King’s best-selling novel of the same name from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Prods.

Hulu, a joint venture of Disney, 21st Century Fox and NBCUniversal, hired TV production exec Beatrice Springborn as head of originals in June.