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WIRE Buzz: Michael Chabon to showrun Star Trek: Picard; Robert Kirkman's sci-fi thriller
Star Trek: Picard names a showrunner and Robert Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment teams with Universal Pictures on a new space thriller in the latest WIRE Buzz.
CBS All Access has announced that author Michael Chabon will be the showrunner for Star Trek: Picard, in which Patrick Stewart returns as the former captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise years after he last commanded the starship.
Chabon, who joined the Star Trek writers' room last year, will work closely with executive producer Akiva Goldsman on the day-to-day operations of the show and with executive producer Alex Kurtzman, who is overseeing all the new Trek shows that CBS All Access is developing.
Chabon remarked, "Star Trek has been an important part of my way of thinking about the world, the future, human nature, storytelling and myself since I was 10 years old. I come to work every day in a state of joy and awe at having been entrusted with the character and the world of Jean-Luc Picard, with this vibrant strand of the rich, intricate and complex tapestry that is Trek."
The Hugo, Nebula, and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's books and collections have often touched on the sci-fi and superhero genres, including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and others. He's also worked on the screenplays for films like John Carter and Spider-Man 2 and penned the Star Trek: Short Treks episodes “Calypso” and “Q&A."
The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment is working with Universal Pictures and the production company Circle of Confusion to develop a new sci-fi thriller called Across the Void.
The film will be based on the novel by S.K. Vaughn, which is the pen name of Shane Kuhn. The novel arrives next Tuesday (July 2) from Skybound Books and follows an astronaut, Commander Maryam “May” Knox, as she wakes up alone aboard a wrecked spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter and struggles to both stay alive and return to Earth.
Kuhn will pen the script himself, overseen by Kirkman and the rest of the Skybound team. A director, cast and start of production are all yet to be announced. Skybound and Universal have also partnered recently on an adaptation of Kirkman's own comic book, Oblivion Song.
A brand new eight-episode series based on War of the Worlds is on the way and the first photos from the latest version of the H.G. Wells sci-fi classic have surfaced.
Gabriel Byrne and Elizabeth McGovern star in the international production from Canal Plus, Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa, and AGC Television. The story, which was originally about an invasion of Mars that decimates England and the globe, has been updated and is now set in modern-day Europe. Check out the pics:
The stills above certainly highlight the dangerous situation that the people of Earth find themselves in -- hiding in subway stations, trapped in elevators -- but we have yet to see what the invaders themselves look like.
Byrne said about the series, per Variety: "In literature, dystopian novels and science fiction has been a safe place for us to deal with collective terror. But what Wells also understood is that the greatest threat is not from out there, but from inside ourselves, and we see in this new telling of the story; a warning that it is only our own humanity that will save us."
This version of the tale, which does not yet have a North American network or streaming service behind it, is the second that is underway. A BBC production set in the original story's Edwardian England is also in the works. The last major version of the story, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, arrived in 2005.
