Sci Fi TV News Briefs: Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Books Are Headed to Television, Hulu Grabs The Handmaid's Tale Sequel, and More

Sci Fi TV News Briefs: Quick hits keeping you updated on sci fi and fantasy television news.

TV Journeys to Earthsea: Yet another epic fantasy series is in development for television, this time based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, with Jennifer Fox producing and A24 as the studio. Those books started out in 1968 as a trilogy which included A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, and they are set in a world that consists of a vast archipelago of hundreds of islands. The focus is on the use of magic and how the abuse of the arcane powers can impact the balance of the world. Additional books and short stories followed the original trilogy, expanding on the world of Earthsea. The books were previously adapted for television by the Sci Fi Channel as Legends of Earthsea in 2005, though that took many liberties with the source material and Le Guin expressed her dissatisfaction with the production. The author had given her blessing to Jennifer Fox to adapt the books before passing away, so hopefully this upcoming series will be more faithful to the books. No network is attached at this point, but expect this to draw plenty of interest.

Netflix Heads Into The Night: Netflix continues to expand its international offerings and has ordered the Belgian-made series Into The Night. Deadline Hollywood offers the following description:

The series begins with a sudden solar event, as the sun inexplicably starts killing everything in its path. The show centers around the lucky passengers and crew of an overnight flight out of Brussels, as they attempt to fly west — into the safety of the dark night. The plane’s manifest is multinational and multilingual, with passengers rich and poor, young and old, civilian and military. The seemingly ordinary travelers share but one thing: a desire to survive the sun — and each other — by any means necessary.

This series will likely be targeting a 2020 debut.

Hulu Takes The Testmants: Hulu and MGM have acquired the rights to Margaret Atwood’s upcoming novel The Testaments which is a sequel to her 1985 dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale. Their plan is to adapt it to television, but it is unclear at this point if it will be separate from Hulu’s current Handmaid’s Tale series or if it will be incorporated into that show. The novel takes place fifteen years after Offred’s final scene in the original book and is told from the perspective of three different women: Aunt Lydia (from the original story), a young woman living in Gilead, and a woman living in Canada who is horrified by the situation in Gilead. Creator and showrunner for Hulu series Bruce Miller has envisioned as many as ten seasons for the show, so it is possible that elements from The Testaments could be worked into the ongoing storyline.

NBC Heads for the Deep Freeze: NBC is developing a currently untitled drama from David Slack (Person of Interest) and Josh Berman about the experimental use of cryonics. Sony Pictures TV will be producing. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series follows

An enigmatic billionaire and a group of people who have had their bodies frozen. The billionaire gathers more than 250 such people, who have attempted to cheat death by undergoing the freezing process in hopes that a future medical breakthrough will someday allow them to be brought back to life. As these people from different moments in time wake up, however, they come to realize you can’t cheat death without paying a price.

The network could include this in the 2020 pilot season or may be looking to get it on the schedule as soon as Summer.

NBC Turns to Brain Trust: The peacock network is also developing a sci fi drama from Eric Charmelo and Nicole Snyder (both worked on Midnight, Texas and Supernatural) with Universal Television producing. Deadline Hollywood gives the following description for the project:

Brain Trust asks what would you do if you could project your mind into another person’s body? What if you could experience the life of anyone you wanted? The Brain Trust centers on a group of young grad students who have developed cutting-edge technology to do just that, but they soon will learn that everything has consequences — some darker than they could have ever imagined.

This one could also be part of the upcoming pilot season, and/or could be targeting a Summer run.

Production Notes: Will Poulter (Black Mirror, The Maze Runner) has been cast in one of the lead roles for Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings prequel series. The upcoming third season of HBO’s Westworld, which will premiere in 2020, will have eight episodes, down from the ten eps the first two seasons had.