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Demimonde: J.J. Abrams says first season of his epic and intimate sci-fi fantasy HBO series is written
J.J. Abrams has made some significant progress on that upcoming sci-fi fantasy series he’s producing for HBO. In fact, he’s revealed that the first season of Demimonde has been written.
Speaking with Collider, Abrams explained that one unexpected benefit of being under lockdown due to the coronavirus was that the writers were able to take their time with the story.
“One of the remarkable and unexpected benefits of this otherwise trying and in many cases painful time has been that the projects that we've been working on have been allowed to gestate and simmer,” he said. “The writing has been able to happen without that more typical urgency of pre-production and production.”
Having this extra time, according to Abrams, allowed the show’s writers “to not just outline the season, but write the season.”
Abrams added that, even as film and television productions begin to resume a more normal schedule and process, he hopes allowing creative projects to take their time and not be constantly rushed becomes the standard, rather than the deviation.
“I feel like we're in a place that feels like it should be more the norm than it ever is to really kind of know where you're going to go,” he said, adding: “I just feel like that's one of the things that this time has allowed us to do in a way that I don't think we've ever had the luxury before.”
Described by HBO only as "an epic and intimate sci-fi fantasy drama," The Hollywood Reporter said back in 2018, when news of the series first dropped, that Demimonde is about a family who gets into a horrible car crash. When the mother, a scientist, falls into a coma, her young daughter begins nosing around her experiments and, in doing so, gets “transported to another world amid a battle against a monstrous, oppressive force.” The girl’s father then follows after her.
Although Abrams is an executive producer on HBO's sci-fi drama Westworld, Demimonde is the first show he’s written since 2008's Fringe. HBO picked up the series and gave the show a straight-to-series order after a lengthy bidding war with Apple.
