oracle86 wrote:ChrisTilford wrote: I've checked out the Entertainment Lounge & have seen a few things that I currently follow (or hope to follow if I had the time) like The Strain & Tyrant. Looking to open up a lot of conversation when things start picking up once they premiere.
And for Westworld, maybe HBO will accelerate the process once Jonah's cred picks up post-Interstellar.
Oh yes, FX's development slate is looking really good at the moment.
HBO has a couple of other SF shows in development as well -
The Spark and recently
MaddAddam, and its unlikely that all 3 will get picked up. So fingers crossed for
Westworld.
Totally agree on FX! Telemark, the project I mentioned earlier is from the Slumdog Millionaire team (Danny Boyle, writer Simon Beaufoy & producer Christian Coulson). About the Norwegian resistance fighters who attempt to sabotage Hitler's nuclear program in World War II. And also, a miniseries on Grigori Rasputin from the creator of Prison Break, Paul Scheuring.
In addition to The Spark, MaddAddam & Westworld, there's also Ridley Scott's "Pharaoh", which ties aliens with Ancient Egypt! Not only does that make four science fiction projects in HBO, but also four dramas in development that are set in Ancient Egypt on competing networks (the others being SpikeTV's "Tut", FOX's "Hieroglyph" (which got canned in late June/early July) & a detective drama series called "The Book of the Dead" (There's no network attachment to it yet, but it's a British co-production alongside the Weinstein Company).).
Consider this: Aronofsky's previously had a project with HBO, Hobgoblin (written by Michael Chabon), which got sucked into limbo. Ridley Scott's direction on a pilot alone won't guarantee a pickup as evidenced by Showtime passing on "The Vatican" earlier this year. The Spark was announced before Westworld (June 7, 2013), & there's been no further news of progress for it since, which strongly indicates inactivity. Taking into account all of this, we can assume Jonah's got the best odds.
But seriously, the multitude of shows in development with similar settings is mindblowing. There's three Arctic dramas in the works: Pivot is co-producing "Fortitude" with UK's Channel 4, which is being billed as an eco-thriller (somewhat similar to the Scandinavian crime stuff like Bron & Forbrydelsen (the original versions of The Bridge at FX & The Killing at AMC/Netflix, respectively) & this one's partly filmed in Iceland too). Xbox is doing an adaptation of Chuck Dixon's comic "Winterworld" (which has a post-apocalyptic setting). And Cinemax has "Blood & Ice" which is the Arctic Western I mentioned in an earlier post. Not only that, but if you check out the developmental slates of Starz or Cinemax on Futoncritic, you're bound to find multiple medieval pieces, mob/crime family stuff, outlaws, music business (though not as much), returning soldiers/civil war-ish things & so on (When Starz is not off developing sci-fi/fantasy like Incursion, Human Error, Blackbirds et al, or Cinemax is not off doing the same with stuff like Blood & Ice, Outcast, & The Sector).
Xbox is planning series adaptations based on many of their games which have counterparts on other networks too. Gears of War (which could be a companion piece to their own Halo TV series & its digital feature "Night Fall"), State of Decay (The Walking Dead), Age of Empires, Fable, & Forza Motorsport (I'm not kidding), Deadlands (Western/Horror mix which folks might compare with El Rey's "From Dusk til Dawn" for the horror aspect & Cinemax's Banshee from the Western angle, I think). In addition to that, there's also an adaptation of the Warren Ellis novel "Gun Machine". There are also 2 projects from Xbox & Pivot which are more outlandish than usual : From the former, an interactive historical docudrama miniseries called "13 Days of Blood" (About the Ancient Roman Empire. They even advertise it as 'Playing Television'
) & from Pivot, "Prison Earth", a science fiction drama set in a Guantanamo Bay-esque facility housing visitors from outer space (they'll cover xenophobia, prisoner's rights et al, and they'll have visual effects from NZ's Weta Workshop, who did Avatar). Another interesting project at Pivot is "Thirst" (family drama covering water rights in a dying New Mexico town).
These could be serious competition to Netflix & Amazon, Starz & even possibly HBO (given time of course), if they play their cards right. Purely from a cult angle alone, not from an awards perspective.
