Ariel Winter To Star In NBC Comedy Pilot ‘Hungry’, Replacing Demi Lovato

EXCLUSIVE: Modern Family star Ariel Winter has been tapped as the lead of NBC’s multi-camera comedy series Hungry. She succeeds Demi Lovato who had been attached to the project for almost a year but stepped down from acting duties Thursday for scheduling reasons just as the pilot was about to start production.

NBC remained high on the project, opting for a swift recasting so the pilot stays on schedule with the rest of the cast in place. With Winter on board, production is moving forward this coming week, starting with a table read on Tuesday. Lovato, along with their manager Scooter Braun, remain executive producers.

Written and executive produced by Suzanne Martin and to be directed by James Burrows, Hungry follows a group of friends who belong to a food-issues group helping one another as they look for love, success and the perfect thing in the fridge that’s going to make it all better.

Valerie Bertinelli, Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, Ryan McPartlin, Alex Brightman and Ashley D. Kelley also star in the pilot, which comes from Sean Hayes and Todd Milliner’s Hazy Mills, SB Projects and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

Hayes, Milliner, Lovato, Braun, Scott Manson and James Shin exec produce.

For 11 seasons, Winter played Alex Dunphy, the brainy middle child in the Dunphy family, on ABC’s Emmy-winning comedy series Modern Family, sharing in the show’s four SAG Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. She also voiced the title character in Disney Jr.’s animated series Sofia the First. Winter is repped by Gersh and Management 360 and Goodman Genow Schenkman.