sf/f TV development news - 2013

[Temis the Vorta]

Big news on The Man in the High Castle adaptation!

Syfy said today it has sealed a deal to adapt the Hugo Award-winning tome with Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, Hunted) attached to write and exec produce. Ridley Scott’s Scott Free will produce with Headline, Electric Shepherd Productions (the production arm of Dick’s estate) and FremantleMedia International. Producers are Ridley Scott and Stewart Mackinnon. Spotnitz will write the first two hours and supervise the writing of the second two hours, Syfy said today.

[Bob The Skutter]

That's weird, BBC announced that a couple of years ago, wonder if it's a co-pro?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010...dick-bbc-drama

[Temis the Vorta]

Deadline says "Some of the puzzle pieces have since shifted." Which implies that the BBC is no longer involved. Probably just SyFy's baby now.

Any ideas for the lead role? I always envision PK Dick heroes as a cross between Paul Giametti and Steve Buscemi, although they generally end up looking like Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise by the time they make it to the screen.

More news today, Josh Holloway has a new sci fi(isn) show.

Based on unpublished book Dissident by John Dixon, Intelligence is centered at U.S. Cyber Command and focuses on a unit that has been created around one agent with a very special gift — a microchip has been implanted in his brain that allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Holloway will play Gabriel Black, a former Navy SEAL and dedicated intelligence officer.

Sounds like an unexciting premise, but hey, it's Josh Holloway! I won't be fussy. Maybe they can get Zach Levi for the lead role?

[JD]

Interesting. I liked Holloway on Lost so that's enough to get me to keep and eye on this.

[Christopher]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Huh? So it's Geordi La Forge 2.0? That's a pretty narrow power set for a superpowered secret agent. Unless it includes an ability like Gary from Alphas to pick up and manipulate computer data.

[stj]

You might just think night vision but the entire EM spectrum would be rather more impressive than IR alone. Imagine tailing someone talking on a cell phone (commonly happens,) hiding around a corner but still seeing the signal. Or tracing radioactives by spotting a few stray gamma rays. Or being able to ID materials by their appearance in the UV. Or being able to always see flushing in suspects by IR. This would be incredibly handy in fires.

But it would just be neat for the show to take the character's POV of cosmic ray ioniization. Or an X-ray look at the sky. The IR from the eyelids would cause a lot of angst, maybe excessively.

[Bob The Skutter]

Looks like BBC have commissioned a show set in Atlantis to replace Merlin this Autumn. Will be filmed in Morocco (and Wales) and looks like the creator is Howard Overman who writes Misfits, wrote for Merlin, Dirk Gently and Vexed, and will be produced by the same people as Merlin.

[Christopher]

^And apparently the lead in Atlantis is a young version of the Greek mythological hero Jason.

http://scifibulletin.com/2013/02/12/...ew-bbc-series/

[Enterprise is Great]

Billy Campbell To Co-Star In Fox Pilot ‘Delirium’

[JD]

Bob The Skutter wrote:

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Looks like BBC have commissioned a show set in Atlantis to replace Merlin this Autumn. Will be filmed in Morocco (and Wales) and looks like the creator is Howard Overman who writes Misfits, wrote for Merlin, Dirk Gently and Vexed, and will be produced by the same people as Merlin.

Christopher wrote:

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^And apparently the lead in Atlantis is a young version of the Greek mythological hero Jason.

http://scifibulletin.com/2013/02/12/...ew-bbc-series/

I really enjoy Merlin and Misfits, so I'll definitely be checking that out if I get the chance.

[Christopher]

I like Merlin, but I loathed the pilot of Misfits so much that I didn't even finish it. I've rarely seen such a heavyhanded, graceless attempt at superpowers-as-teen-angst-allegories. Oh, the shy character turns invisible! And this girl's a telepath who can hear all the nasty things people think about her! And the like. It was all so formulaic and ploddingly self-conscious. And it was trying so hard to be edgy that it was just thoroughly unpleasant. The wisecracking kid who was supposed to be the comic relief was just a contemptible, narcissistic whiner that I quickly grew to despise.

But hopefully this Atlantis will be more in the vein of Merlin. Sounds like it will be.

[Temis the Vorta]

Lead cast in Bloodline.

Anybody remember her as the succubus from The Gates? No? Yeah I guess about four people watched that show...

Bloodline is described as a pulpy, highly stylized look into the cheeky world of Bird Benson (Samuels), a smart, irreverent and strong young girl who, due to an accident of birth, finds herself caught in the middle of an epic struggle between two warrior families set against the backdrop of modern suburbia.

Still not sure how to parse that, but I assume that "warrior" is not a poetic metaphor for organized crime or a homeowner's association, but rather has a fantastical twist to it, even if it's more cultural than supernatural, some kind of hidden subculture that has survived for eons. It would be cool to see fantasy that isn't the kind of fantasy with vampires et al.

[Temis the Vorta]

No idea what to make of this. Anyone read the book?

Melding globally-scaled action-adventure with the technology underlying sophisticated role-playing games and interweaving love stories, Reamde kicks off with a kidnapping triggering an attempt by family, friends and suspicious acquaintances to rescue the hostage who get ensnarled into a worldwide techno-hunt.

[Christopher]

I haven't read the book, but Neal Stephenson is a major SF novelist, and it's always nice to see TV looking to SF novels for source material. (I guess the success of Game of Thrones has prompted more interest in that direction.) I just hope it turns out better than FlashForward did.

[Temis the Vorta]

I'd really like to see HBO/Netflix/etc do an epic space opera based on a novel series.

More monsters in the Arctic! (Which made me wonder, which has more monsters by now, the North or South Pole?)

AMC has put in development The Terror, a drama series adaptation of the 2007 bestselling novel by Dan Simmons, which is being executive produced by Scott Free TV, Television 360 and feature producer Alexandra Milchan. Written by hot feature writer David Kajganich, The Terror is set in 1847 when the crew of a Royal Naval expedition to find the Arctic’s treacherous Northwest Passage discovers instead a monstrous predator – a cunning and vicious Gothic horror that stalks the ships in a desperate game of survival, the consequences of which could endanger the region and its native people forever.

So when is Michael Bay going to do a movie about a sudden plague monsters being freed from their Arctic/Antarctic prisons by global warming?