Adapting classic movies to TV series has been one of the latest trends that TV networks are making profit off of. At this point, it obviously does not matter for the studios how unsuccessfull a movie was at the box office.
That being said, Fox is preparing for a movie adaptation, namely Alien Nation. Mandy Patinkin and James Caan starred in the original movie. James Caan played Detective Sergeant Matthew Sykes while Mandy Patinkin played Detective Samuel “George” Francisco. The pair were forced to work together (although Sykes did not enjoy it) while George’s species started to integrate with the human society after a ship that carried more than 300,000 of his enslaved people (which were called Newcomers) had to land on Earth. Back then, the movie was considered to be a metaphorical depiction of racial problems of the day.
It was announced in 2009 that Alien Nation would be coming to TV as a series but it never happened and the project was abandoned. When Fox stated that it wanted to bring the movie to TV, it hired Art Marcum (Iron Man) and Matt Holloway (Punisher: War Zone) to write the script for the TV series. However, according to Deadline, filmmaker Jeff Nichols will write the script while Brian Kavanaugh-Jones (Loving) and Sara Greene (Mud) will act as producers of the TV show.
It surely will be interesting to watch the cult sci-fi movie as a TV series and it is obvious that we need more decent sci-fi shows on TV. Fingers crossed for Alien Nation!
