One of Terry Gilliam’s classic films, Twelve Monkeys, may be getting a new life as a TV series, expanding the time-travel universe on the network that brought us… Sharknado. That’s right, Syfy has put in a “cast-contingent” order for a 60-minute pilot based on a spec script by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett (Story Editors on Nikita).
The 1995 film from Gilliam is led by Bruce Willis as he travels in time to prevent a plague from wiping out humanity, and also features an early iconic performance from Brad Pitt. It’s a cyclical movie that plays with ambiguity and memory, all inside of one of Gilliams most eccentric and detailed little universes. The inspiration was Le Jetée, a french short film from the ’60s assembled from black and white still photos.
This is an ambitious project for a network that hasn’t managed to build a reputation for sophisticated programming. It would be nice to see this turn out well and become an interesting series. Imagine if the same kind of lighting-in-a-bottle renaissance that left us with a few really great shows on AMC happened on Syfy and gave us two or three new, amazing scifi series sandwiched between Battlestar Galactica reruns and pun-based disaster movies.
Source | Deadline