12 Monkeys Adaptation, Possible Series, Coming to SyFy

12 Monkeys Adaptation Headed to Syfy
Science ain't an exact science...

by Matt Fowler

THR's Lesley Goldberg is reporting that a TV adaptation of the 1995 Bruce Willis/Brad Pitt sci-fi film 12 Monkeys is near a series order at Syfy.

The pitch for the series involves a 90-minute "backdoor" pilot that would eventually lead to a straight-to-series order - much like Syfy's Battlestar Galactica. The original Terry Gilliam film involved a time travel trek to the past in an attempt to unravel the origins of a mysterious virus which wiped out almost all of humanity.

As Syfy president of original programming Mark Stern tells THR, "We have a great pilot, we're now flushing out what the rest of the series might be. We're looking at short orders, maybe eight to 10 [episodes] as opposed to 13. Some may be [split runs of] 10 and 10. Our goal is to do five or six original scripted series a year and a big tentpole event miniseries that could also possibly serve as a backdoor pilot to a series as well the way that Battlestar Galactica did. It's an exciting time for us."

Terry Matalas and (former IGN TV writer!) Travis Fickett, who are currently working on Nikita's final season for the The CW, are writing the pilot with 24's Jon Cassar directing.

Gands wrote:It could be awesome, but I'm pretty puzzled as to how that would make a series.