AMC Goes to ‘Mars’
The Hollywood Reporter details AMC’s plans to develop Red Mars, a new science fiction series based on the novel of the same name. Jonathan Hensleigh, writer of Armageddon and The Punisher, is on board as writer/executive producer. Michael Jaffe, Howard Braunstein, Vince Gerardis, Ralph Vicinanza and Eli Kirschner will also executive produce.
"[Red Mars] fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies," says Christina Wayne, AMC’s senior VP of original series and miniseries. "We’re always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new."
Red Mars, which AMC is touting as character-driven, is based on a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. It chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet. Robinson wrote two sequels to the novel, titled Green Mars and Blue Mars, as well as several short stories published in The Martians. AMC will certainly have a lot of material to mine for their series.
This is not the first time that Red Mars has threatened to invade television. James Cameron once held the rights to the Mars trilogy, hoping to develop it as a five-hour miniseries to be directed by Martha Coolidge. He eventually passed on the option. Gale Anne Hurd later planned a similar Mars miniseries for the Sci-Fi Channel, but that too never took flight. It remains to be seen whether AMC’s version will follow in the series’ already ill-fated track record.
In addition to Red Mars, AMC is currently developing a separate sci-fi miniseries, The Prisoner. The miniseries is a remake of the 1960s sci-fi series of the same name, with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen set to star.
Wow. Steller line up of talent. I am completely underwhelmed. AMC is certainly pulling out the stops on this one, and I can just see this effects-less series in my mind's eye now. It really smacks of Sci-Fi's next blunder "Craptica'.I can certainly wait for their re-make of the Prisoner. Can you hear Harlan Ellison's screams of protest yet?