Jennings from Jeopardy! to Comedy

Jeopardy! superwinner Ken Jennings and game-show guru Michael Davies are developing a program for Comedy Central, officials said Monday.

Comedy expects to launch the new game show as a strip in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2006. The network said, “Details of the top-secret project being developed by the dream-team pairing of Davies and Jennings will be revealed at a future date.”

Davies brought Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to ABC, and he oversaw the development of ABC’s Wife Swap and Whose Line Is It Anyway?. For Comedy, Davies shepherded the development of Win Ben Stein’s Money and oversaw the development of The Man Show,which went to the cable channel after ABC passed on it.

Last year, Salt Lake City software engineer Ken Jennings had a six-month-long winning streak on Jeopardy!, racking up a record $2.52 million in prize money in 74 games.

Jennings became a celebrity, making the rounds of late-night talk shows and even writing a book about trivia in American culture that will be released by Random House Inc. next year.