New 'War of the Worlds' TV miniseries

[Captain_Amasov]

New miniseries set in 1897 England, with Peter Harness writing, for production company Mammoth Screen:

http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/war-of-...ds-peter-harness-working-on-new-tv-adaptation

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At least it won't be like the original series' second season.

 

[arch101]

If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it. When you put it into the context of the time it was written, with no tv, movies or books like it to inspire Welles, you realize what a great achievement it is.
The Spielberg movie was great for one thing: the Martian machines are realized almost exactly as written in the novel. I'm personally really looking forward to this mini.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Very cool! I'll be looking forward to seeing this. There's only been one movie, a very low budget one, that went time-accurate, so it will be nice to see another production do that

 

[Richard Baker]

One of the most fascinating aspects the the book's description of Martian technology is that they never invented the hinge/rotary pivot. They used a series of sliding curved plates instead.
Speilberg got this right with his film- not a deal killer for this new one but if they get this tech part right it shows they really did their homework...

 

[Tzenkethi]

The fighting machines should be bodies built to house creatures that are essentially gigantic brains, bodies that move organically rather then like a tank like most WOTW adaptations do.

 

[Klaus]

*crosses fingers, hums "Thunder Child" quietly to himself*

 

[JD]

This could have potential. I love that they are setting back in the original time period.
The only versions I've seen are the George Pal and Steven Spielberg versions. I don't remember much of the Pal version, but I love Spielberg's. Oh, and the LA TheaterWorks/KCRW version of the radio drama, which starred numerous Trek actors include Leonard Nimoy, John DeLancie, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, and Armin Shimmerman. If you can find this version, it's a blast and definitely worth a listen.

 

[RandyS]

^Have you ever heard Orson Welles infamous 1938 radio show? I own a copy and its great.

 

[Klaus]

...and in the You'll-love-it-or-hate-it Dept, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, treasured by many of us here.

 

[JD]

I'd never heard of that before, but I just watched the '06 Sizzle Reel on the show's official website, and that looks pretty awesome.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

As long as its not like that horrible 1988 series. So much wrong with that.

 

[Morpheus 02]

As long as its not like that horrible 1988 series. So much wrong with that.

The first one was pretty fun. I was hoping, by the title, that it was a sequel to this.

The second season erased just about all that was good of the first season & replaced it with a post-apocalyptic mess

 

[Joel_Kirk]

^^
I like (and own) the 1st season of the 1988 series myself. I'm waiting for a continuation to be done someday.

To life immortal!

 

[Owain Taggart]

Speaking of continuations, this summer I picked up a copy of the unofficial sequel 'Edison's Conquest of Mars', originally published in 1898. Unofficial because WotW was so popular, that a sequel was commissioned by a newspaper group and written by their own science editor. Haven't read it yet, but apparently it's all kinds of crazy, but also managed to have a lot of 'firsts' in fiction. It's also available on Project Gutenberg, but this print edition features all of the original illustrations that were first published with it.

 

[.:: TSN ::.]

I would rather want a new Tripods tv-series.. Always liked the books when I was younger and also watched the 80's tv-series some time ago. I think that I was about 10-11 years old when I listened the audio books for a first time. Should read the books again sometime..

I actually thought for a long time that War of the Worlds was just a remake or a different version of the Tripods and was very confused when aliens didnt "cap" the people they captured..

 

[Christopher]

As long as its not like that horrible 1988 series. So much wrong with that.

The first one was pretty fun. I was hoping, by the title, that it was a sequel to this.

The second season erased just about all that was good of the first season & replaced it with a post-apocalyptic mess

I used to have a fond memory of the first season of the '88 series, but then I revisited it, and it turned out to have been mostly pretty horrible. The production values were dirt-cheap, the special effects were primitive compared to the contemporary Star Trek: TNG from the same studio, the writing was apparently done largely by strikebreaking non-union writers so the stories were a mess, and the actors gave broader and weaker performances than I remembered, although their chemistry was reasonably good.

And it was silly to do a direct sequel to the '53 movie and yet have most of the population forget that a cataclysmic global invasion had ever happened. As dismal and awful as the second season was, at least it tried to depict a world that was still feeling the consequences of the invasion 35 years later, although at the cost of being inconsistent with the first season.

 

[Redfern]

I used to have a fond memory of the first season of the '88 series, but then I revisited it, and it turned out to have been mostly pretty horrible. The production values were dirt-cheap, the special effects were primitive compared to the contemporary Star Trek: TNG from the same studio, the writing was apparently done largely by strikebreaking non-union writers so the stories were a mess, and the actors gave broader and weaker performances than I remembered, although their chemistry was reasonably good.

And it was silly to do a direct sequel to the '53 movie and yet have most of the population forget that a cataclysmic global invasion had ever happened. As dismal and awful as the second season was, at least it tried to depict a world that was still feeling the consequences of the invasion 35 years later, although at the cost of being inconsistent with the first season.

Thanks, Chris. You covered the points I wanted to make, primarily, your last paragraph. The first season was little more than a slight tweaking of "The Invaders" shoehorned with elements from the 1953 film. The best part of that series was the opening credit score of the first season, which itself may have been inspired by "Mars, the Bringer of War" by Holst.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Christopher]

The first season was little more than a slight tweaking of "The Invaders" shoehorned with elements from the 1953 film.

Well, I dunno, because The Invaders was about a lone man trying in vain to convince the authorities that the invasion was real (although he later gained a small group of supporters), while WotW was about a team working secretly for the government to stop the invasion. (And yet unconscionably refusing to alert the public to watch out for murderous terrorists who congregated in threes, spoke in strange tongues, and looked like decaying zombies. Their secrecy led to countless avoidable civilian deaths and made it much harder for them to do their jobs. I often find the fictional trope of keeping the paranormal events secret from the public, so as to preserve the conceit that the show is happening in the real world, to be ridiculous and self-defeating for the characters, but this is one of the most outrageous examples of the secrecy trope rising to the point of criminal negligence in protecting the public.)

The best part of that series was the opening credit score of the first season, which itself may have been inspired by "Mars, the Bringer of War" by Holst.

I think "may have" is a little disingenuous. The homage is quite overt.

Personally, I never liked any of Billy Thorpe's music for season 1 -- except the end title theme, and the variant thereof that Thorpe performed in the episode "Choir of Angels" when he was written into the episode as Billy Carlos, whose music the aliens used to convey subliminal brainwashing messages. I really like that piece.

 

[Captain_Amasov]

It's been a while, but the BBC has been showing their 2019 drama trailer that shows (very) little from their version of The War of the Worlds. One clip of the fighting machine at the start, and another of the heat ray vaporising a police officer later on in the trailer:

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According to the production company, they missed the original intended Christmas deadline:

https://twitter.com/mammothscreen/status/1083825134568464384?s=19