News, updates, and (mostly viable) rumors relating to development of science fiction / fantasy television productions. If you have tips or more info on these or other productions, please pass them along in the comments.
As the upfronts approach next week when the broadcast television networks will announce their schedules for the 2015-16 season, there are still plenty of development announcements from other venues hitting the newswires. Here is a roundup of the ones I spotted from this past week.
Development:
Dragon Ball Super: After the success of the big screen animated feature Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F, Toei Animation has announced that they will bring the franchise back to the small screen with Dragon Ball Super. According to Variety, “the story will reunite the franchise’s iconic characters, and follow the aftermath of Goku’s fierce battle with Majin Buu, as he attempts to maintain Earth’s fragile peace”. The series is set to premiere in Japan in July and will likely follow on a U.S. network later this year or early in 2016.
Mayday: Heroes creator Tim Kring’s production company Imperative Entertainment has optioned the rights to this Black Mask comic book series from Curt Pires and Chris Petersen which just hit the stands. ComicBookResources.com gives the official description of the comic:
A washed-up, drug-addicted screenwriter and a transgender bartender stumble onto a Satanic cult’s plan to sacrifice people all across LA (geomapped in the form of a pentagram, of course) and bring on Armageddon. As our intrepid, damaged heroes embark on a suicide mission to stop the crazy cultists, even they wonder if this is all really happening or if they’re just plain crazy. Probably both. The latest project from Curt Pires sees him teaming with art sensation Chris Peterson for a story that cuts to the very center of Hollywood mythology and depravity itself.
No network is attached and this is very early in the production so information is very sketchy on this one at the moment.
Starship Troopers: A remake of Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers has been in the works for quite a while and producer Neal H. Moritz is now saying that it could move to television. That’s only one of the possible fates of the production at this point, though, so consider this one very much up in the air. A CGI television series spin-off from the movie titled Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles previously aired on television in syndication from 1999-2000 producing 36 episodes.
Cat’s Cradle / Darkover: IM Global Television has announced that it will adapt these two literary works to television. Cat’s Cradle is based on the Kurt Vonnegut book and Variety gives the following description: “The story involves the children of a Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and a substance called ice-nine, an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature”. Darkover is based on the Marrion Zimmerman Bradley sci fi books about human attempts to colonize the titular planet in a distant solar system. Whether these are intended as mini-series or ongoing shows (probably the latter for Darkover) is unclear at this point and no network has been attached to either.
Updates:
Damien: This television series continuation of The Omen–coming from The Walking Dead‘s Glen Mazzara–is moving from Lifetime to A&E. Apparently the latter network believed it paired up well with their current series Bates Motel and Lifetime may be moving away from genre series after cancelling fan favorite Witches of East End last year along with low-rated The Lottery. That network has also not had much success with The Chronicles of Lizzie Borden this season. Hollywood Reporter gives the following description for Damien:
Damien follows the adult life of Damien Thorn, the mysterious child from 20th Century Fox’s 1976 feature The Omen. In the A&E series, Damien has grown up and is seemingly unaware of the satanic forces around him. Haunted by his past, Damien must now come to terms with his true destiny — that he is the Antichrist, the most feared man of all time.
The series will likely be targeted to pair up with the fourth season of Bates Motel which should debut in Spring of 2016.
