NBC said on Wednesday that it had dropped plans to develop a new situation comedy starring Mr. Cosby. The decision followed a week of revelations about accusations of rape and sexual assault against him.
NBC offered no comment on the decision and did not say that it was directly related to the fusillade of accounts of previous claims of assault that at least five women have made against Mr. Cosby.
Netflix released a brief statement Tuesday night saying that it had decided to shelve a show commemorating the comic’s 77th birthday, which was scheduled to appear on the service starting Nov 28. The statement read: “At this time we are postponing the launch of the new stand-up comedy special, ‘Bill Cosby 77.' ”
In the NBC project, which is still in the early stages of development and did not have a finished script, Mr. Cosby, who was one of the biggest prime-time comedy stars in the history of NBC, was to have played the patriarch of a large family in the new show.
The decisions come in the face of a wave of reaction to decades-old accusations of sexual assault against Mr. Cosby that have flared up again in recent weeks. In a television interview on Tuesday, the former model Janice Dickinson became at least the fifth woman to come forward with on-the-record accusations that Mr. Cosby assaulted her.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had, until Tuesday, issued only a blanket denial of all the accusations, denouncing them as “old and discredited.” They said they and the comedian would have no further comment on the case.
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