The big screen adaptation of ‘Snowpiercer‘ met to rave reviews and now the rights have been optioned to adapt it as an ongoing television series. Marty Adelstein’s Tomorrow Studios has picked up the rights to the 2013 film with Josh Friedman (‘Sarah Connor Chronicles’, ‘War of the Worlds’) being tapped to write the series.
Of course it seems that they will be basing the series more off of the film than the original French graphic novel ‘Le Transperceneige‘ by Jacques Lob. While this limits how far they could go with the story and how certain viewpoints were given, it still was a film with a fantastic idea behind it.
Friedman knows that with the cast and quality of Bong Joon-ho’s movie he has a lot to accomplish for an ongoing series and says:
“I’m a huge fan of director Bong’s films, especially Snowpiercer. It’s great the way the best sci-fi is great — thoughtful, political, funny, scary and sly. And it’s on a train. A big f—ing train. What more could you want?”
Bong Joon-ho won’t be left out of the mix though as he and his producers Dooho Choi and Chan-wook Park will be on board as executive producers if it is picked up to a series order.
Adelstein adds:
“We are very excited to be working with Josh on this incredible story. As such a prolific and innovative writer he is the ideal person to create a massive new world in this adaptation. This is an expansive, high-concept project and we are thrilled to be a part of reimagining it for television.”
With so many prior movies being made into television shows, it could be annoying to see this happen to ‘Snowpiercer’ though I also felt that the one downside of the film was that it didn’t have enough time to flesh out all of the details from the original graphic novel and an ongoing series may just be able to resolve that.
What are your thoughts on ‘Snowpiercer’ going to the small screen? Do you think the longer nature of the graphic novels have this better suited to be an ongoing series or is this an example of Hollywood once again running out of ideas? Share your thoughts below!
Film synopsis:
In this sci-fi epic from director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Mother), a failed global-warming experiment kills off most life on the planet. The final survivors board the SNOWPIERCER, a train that travels around the globe via a perpetual-motion engine. When cryptic messages incite the passengers to revolt, the train thrusts full-throttle towards disaster.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Collider
