"3001: The Final Odyssey"... a SyFy Original Miniseries

http://deadline.com/2014/11/3001-the-final-odyssey-arthur-clarke-miniseries-syfy-scott-free-1201272297/

Sooooo....yeah. I'll give the new 'back to basics' SyFy this much, they don't think small.

Everybody involved in this, in front of the camera or behind it, is going to have to bring their A+++ game. 2001 was a true game changer in every sense of the word. 2010 paled only in comparison to 2001, otherwise standing tall among any other sci-fi movie of the 80's. Screw this trilogy-capper up, and SyFy's comeback is over before it begins.

With Ridley Scott involved, I am SO thinking Michael Fassbender as David Bowman...

 

Why are they skipping the 3rd book? 206.... whatever.

 

I'd rather they do 2061 first.

 

1) Nothing of worth really happened in it
2) 3001 pretended it never existed
3) Both William Sylvester and Roy Scheider are too dead to take part
4) It wouldn't be a trilogy then, would it?

 

Happy to hear this.

 

What are you doing, Frank?

 

Clarke said himself all three sequels don't necessary refer to the previous book directly. Just like 2010 had to change to be Europa/Jupiter instead of Iapetus/Saturn, etc.

And I found 2061 more interesting than 3001, though the rescue did have a lacklustre resolution.

 

The new thing is to take one book and make it two movies, or three in Hobbit. But now we are just ignoring them?

And there are ways around people being dead, we have seen it all the time.

 

Looking forward to it.

 

If they were adapting these books for the fist time, we would have gotten 5 movies.

2001: A Space Odyssey
2010: Odyssey Two
2061: Odyssey three
3001: The Final Odyssey, Part 1
3001: The Final Odyssey, Part 2

 

I could see them folding certain elements from 2061 into the 3001 narrative, like Mount Zeus threatening the burgeoning Europans, the damaged monolith/Bowman and the 'echoing' (with Floyd swapped out for Frank, allowing both Discovery crew-mates to confront the Monolith makers directly and make the case that it's now their turn to be 'farmers in the field of stars'). Would make a better climax anyway than the one Clarke cribbed from Independence Day.

 

3001 introduced some interesting ideas, but for the most part it was terribly hokey and devalued the previous stories. I'd rather they make an adaptation of 2061.

 

Is Tom Hanks still involved? (Back when this was first talked about, Hanks wanted to play Frank Poole.)

 

Mouth agape here. Very happy to read this. I have realistic expectations, but I hope for the best. 2001 is one of my favorite films. 2001 is also one of the most important films ever made. This is, therefore, a historically significant announcement.

 

I'm very excited about this (with some trepidations), as Clarke is my favorite author. I do wish that they hadn't skipped over 2061, as that was my favorite book in the series, but this has a lot of possibilities, if they don't screw it up. Which is a big "if" these days. If Clarke's 31st century looks like a factory basement with everybody dressed in bondage gear....

 

Right. Clarke was not a continuity-oriented writer. The only series he ever wrote (discounting things like the Rama sequels that were actually written by Gentry Lee with limited input from Clarke) was the "White Hart" series of tall-tale humor stories, and the only thing that linked those was that they were all narrated by the same character in the same tavern. As a rule, Clarke didn't do sequels; everything he did was set in a separate reality. So when he did do sequels to 2001, they didn't really form a single continuous series, but were three separate branchings off of the same starting point. And they were more sequels to Kubrick's movie than to Clarke's original book.

 

Hmm. I dunno. I'm excited by the announcement, of course. But this would be a tough nut to crack under even the best of circumstances, and I don't consider Hollywood in general right now or Syfy in general to be anywhere near the best of circumstances. I'm totally confident in their ability to epically mess this up.

Also, I'm not certain Ridley Scott is the right person to guide this. Right now, he's just acting as executive producer, so we don't even know how much real input he's going to have. Is he actually the one guiding this, or is he just a name to attach to it to lend it some credibility? A lot will depend on who is chosen as director. I'm not sure that Ridley Scott is a good choice, stylistically, to lead this though.

And, like others here, I would have preferred that they made 2061 before they made this, even if its not strictly necessary from a continuity standpoint. For that matter, I wish they were doing this as a feature film or a series of feature films. As much a fan of television as I am, I still think the realm of the feature film is where the 2001 series belongs.

 

I'd rather they did both. Still I'll be waiting for the DVD release of this. You know there will be one.

 

Let me quote what I wrote on Facebook yesterday; it saves me time:

When it comes time to cast 3001, let me suggest for Frank Poole... Ben Browder.

He's played an astronaut before, and there are similarities between Poole and Crichton. He'd do well.

I didn't like 3001. Actually, I quite loathed it. Though, the more I think about it, I don't think I really liked Clarke as a novelist very much. Short stories, yes, like "The Star" and "The Nine Billion Names of God." The novels, I can't think of a Clarke novel that I truly loved. 2010 may come closest, but even that was a string of linked vignettes that occasionally was in search of a plot.

I'm disappointed that there's no word here on a 2061 adaptation. 2061 is sort of the "fun" one. It doesn't try to do a lot and it's inessential, so it doesn't have to be flashy to succeed.

 

^ I really like your suggestion of Ben Browder for Frank Poole. I can see that working really well.