Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
WIRE Buzz: Amazon orders show from Westworld creators; Russos producing Marvel-DC rivalry doc; more
Thanks to their wildly popular revamp of Michael Crichton's Westworld for HBO, showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are very hot commodities in the sci-fi space.
Today, Variety broke the news that the creative husband-wife duo are executive-producing an adaptation of William Gibson's 2014 novel, The Peripheral, at Amazon. While the television project was first confirmed in the spring of 2018, the real fresh development here is that Amazon has put in a full series order for it.
“Thirty-five years ago, William Gibson invented the future,” Nolan and Joy, who have an overall deal with the company, said in a statement run by Variety. “With The Peripheral, he brings us another look, and his vision is as clear, intoxicating, and terrifying as ever. All of us at Kilter are incredibly proud to be supporting Vincenzo and Scott’s brilliant vision for bringing Gibson’s work to the screen.”
Spanning several time periods in the future, The Peripheral will follow the life of "Flynne Fisher, a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. Flynne is smart, ambitious, and doomed. She has no future. Until the future comes calling for her."
Showrun by Scott B. Smith, the one-hour drama will be directed by Vincenzo Natali (In the Tall Grass).
“We’re thrilled to announce The Peripheral as our first project with Jonah, Lisa, Athena and their talented team at Kilter Films,” added Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios. “This story calls for a masterful level of talent to bring acclaimed author William Gibson’s science fiction thriller to life. We are excited to partner with Warner Bros. Television, Oscar-nominated writer Scott B. Smith and Vincenzo Natali in bringing this fantastic new series to our global Prime Video customers."
William Gibson is an acclaimed speculative/science fiction writer who is basically credited as the father of cyberpunk. He also famously penned an unused screenplay for Alien 3. That script was recently turned into a graphic novel by Dark Horse.
After changing the MCU forever with the release of Avengers: Endgame, the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, are stepping back into the world of comic book properties with an upcoming docu-series on Quibi called Slugfest: Inside the Epic, 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC.
"The documentary series chronicles the growth of a new American art form -- comic books -- as it tracks the rise of two groundbreaking creative companies who went on to become the comics-publishing powerhouses, Marvel and DC," reads the official release. "A race to the top fueled by competitive intuition and creative ingenuity, what resulted was an indomitably American industry, rising from its scrappy, disregarded roots to establish culture-changing mythologies."
Quibi is a streaming platform created by DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg. It is scheduled to launch in April.
Your game nights no longer have to include heated debates about whether you should play a murder mystery board game or a tabletop RPG. Thanks to an official mash-up of Clue and Dungeons & Dragons, you no longer have to choose!
The new game, fully licensed by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, brings the Agatha Christie-inspired thrill of solving a dastardly homicide to the context of a sweeping fantasy realm. This is a crossover we never knew we needed.
The official description of Clue: Dungeons & Dragons is as follows:
An Infernal Puzzle Box, delivered by a Hellrider of Elturel, has been stolen from the party of adventurers. Determined to reclaim their box of infernal secrets, one of Zariel’s minions has slain and secretly replaced an adventurer, unbeknownst to the rest of the members! In CLUE: Dungeons & Dragons, it’s up to you to determine WHO has been replaced by a devil in disguise, WHAT weapon was used in the execution, and WHERE in the Forgotten Realms the Infernal puzzle box could be hidden.
You can learn more about the game (now on sale) here.
