Pilot season continues to heat up, with Star Trek producer/director JJ Abrams selling another pilot, his second this week. This time JJ and his fellow Trek producer Bryan Burk are returning to sci-fi with a mysterious post-apocalyptic series for NBC titled Revolution. Details below.
Abrams sells Revolution to NBC
Earlier this week we reported that JJ Abrams and his Bad Robot production company sold a hotel-based one-hour drama titled Shelter to The CW. Abrams is mostly known on TV for mysterious genre shows like Lost, Fringe and the recently-premiered Alcatraz. His latest pitch picked up by NBC looks like it could fit into that mold. Titled Revolution, the show’s description sounds promising:
“In this epic adventure thriller, a family struggles to reunite in a post-apocalyptic American landscape: a world of empty cities, local militias and heroic freedom fighters, where every single piece of technology — computers, planes, cars, phones, even lights — has mysteriously blacked out … forever.”
Abrams last worked with NBC on his spy couple series Undercovers, which was cancelled half way through its first season in 2010. Abrams later admitted he "f–ked up" on that show, but apparently NBC still want to work with the prolific producer.
Abrams and Burk will executive-produce the project for Warner Brothers Television. The pilot was written by Supernatural creator Eric Kripke.
Abrams currently has 3 shows on the air (Person of Interest on CBS plus Fringe and Alcatraz on Fox). If both his pilots (Shelter and Revolution) get picked up, and none of his other shows get cancelled, Bad Robot could have five TV series going next season.
LIKE IT!!!
Good luck, JJ (just hope the priorities aren’t quantity over quality).
Person of Interest is excellent! Revolution sounds great, too. Who doesn’t love a good post-apocalyptic story? Commies! That’s who!
Sounds a lot like Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road.’
This sounds interesting! Might capture the former “Jericho” audience.
““In this epic adventure thriller, a family struggles to reunite in a post-apocalyptic American landscape: a world of empty cities, local militias and heroic freedom fighters, where every single piece of technology — computers, planes, cars, phones, even lights — has mysteriously blacked out … forever.” ”
They need to be careful with this. This sounds very close to SM Stirling’s current/ongoing genre bestselling “Emberverse” series of novels that began with “Dies the Fire.” If I were Stirling, I would be paying very close attention to the storyline/concept for this series.
Kinda weird that recent years have seen so many “apocalyptic” post-cataclysm shows (and films). Are they trying to tell us something?
@7 I know nothing….nothing…
Yuvo, hey Commandant!
Sounds like a good show to me!
7. Schultz – February 3, 2012
Kinda weird that recent years have seen so many “apocalyptic” post-cataclysm shows (and films). Are they trying to tell us something?
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It’s the zeitgeist. Now that we’re in 2012, apocalypses are in the fore of people’s imaginations. Not to mention that we are hopping from war to war, and look to have another with Iran.
The premise of JJ’s show sounds like societal collapse following the loss of technology as we might experience from a massive solar flare. If the premise is of a world wide disaster, then everybody in the world is affected and it’s hard for unaffected nations to help the affected, and it becomes a true global apocalypse story.
But a good way to get people thinking about what they are without all their devices.
#7
Yep. They’re saying there’s a lot of money in the apocalypse, as with alien invasions, and vampires, etc., etc.
Just wait ’til Abrams comes out with his next show: a post-apocalyptic vampire and his alien girlfriend wander the deserted Hollywood backlots, acting out their favorite movies and TV shows and wondering where it all went wrong.
This fall on NBC!
Wow man!! JJ’s on a roll!! :) Good for him! :)
Sounds great to me…I loved Jericho!!!
I bet it was a giant lens flare that knocked out the world’s communications systems
To a generation raised on Twitter, facebooking, online ‘virtual’ lives and i-this and i-that, a show about the death of all of that technology might suddenly seem like real ‘science fiction’ now. Like it tell my wife sometimes, all it takes is one good EMP and all of this technology we’re so inundated with won’t be worth the price of a good lump of coal.
This show looks promising. I think I’ll check it out when it comes around (assuming we still have electricity then… hee, hee!).
@6 “They need to be careful with this. This sounds very close to SM Stirling’s current/ongoing genre bestselling “Emberverse” series of novels that began with “Dies the Fire.” If I were Stirling, I would be paying very close attention to the storyline/concept for this series.”
Here is a summary of Stirling’s “Dies the Fire:”
“Dies the Fire (2004) is an alternate history, post-apocalyptic novel by S. M. Stirling and the first installment of the Emberverse series. Dies the Fire chronicles the struggle of two groups who try to survive “The Change,” a sudden worldwide event that alters physical laws so that electricity, gunpowder, and most other forms of high-energy-density technology no longer work. As a result, modern civilization comes crashing down.”
#10 dmduncan
Yep, get ready for another war over there. We’re in the Forever War for real.
Snake Pliskin started it in Escape From LA.
Even less time for Trek…
Can’t blame any of these guys for striking while they are hot- but they are not doing the average Trek fans any favors.
I don’t really understand why series keep to be thrown on a market when they usually falter after one or two seasons anyway. (cf. Surface, FlashForward, Threshold, V, Stargate Universe, etc.)
Too bad reality TV is currently on the rise at the expense of quality series. Hopefully the next decade has a place for a 5-7 years running Star Trek show.
Has anybody here been watching “Fringe”? The storytelling has become quite compelling. The science fiction elements are still highly prominent, but the characters and their emotional arcs are equally or more compelling. To my mind it has captured the balance of good drama and compelling science fiction parable that characterized the “Star Trek” series at their finest.
At any rate it looks like the show will very likely be ending soon as the ratings are really bad and the Fox suits have been complaining that the show loses them money (http://www.tvovermind.com/fringe/fringe-loses-fox-a-lot-of-money-cancellation-seems-likely/115767).
@16 Actually a lump of coal should be worth quite a lot when all the technology is gone.
@ 22 Yeah, I’ve been enjoying Fringe. I just hope they can make a proper ending before FOX pulls the plug forever.
22. Gorn Born – February 4, 2012
23. I’m Dead Jim! – February 4, 2012
Word is that if Fringe is to be canceled, there are enough unfilmed episodes yet to wrap it up and that Fox will give them the scoop on the future early enough to allow them time to conclude it- the producers have 2 sets of scripts for the final few episodes..
My guess? They will pull a ‘Chuck ‘ and give them 13 more next year to get Fringe over the magic 100 episodes…
Simple. WW3. After that. We make first contact with the Vulcan’s.
Thanks Mike that is the best thought(seriously) I have heard,,,,a note of optimisom to think about……We need something positive.
#3 – Huh?
It is an interesting premise and quite a scary one as well. Right now, it is hard to imagine how we survived without all the technology we have now, but much of humanity did and still does.
I guess it’s no point in me getting a cellphone, given this show’s premise. I’ll finally get the hang of how to text and do all that other cool stuff that everyone else does, then it all goes phut making the phone useless. That way I won’t miss what I’ve not had in the first place. I think I’ll miss reading and posting to sites like this though… however, I suspect my focus will be on more immediate difficulties anyway.
If Fox actually gave a damn about Fringe, they would move it OUT of the abyss that is Friday night TV. What is their target audience? 18 – 49 males? What are 18 – 49 males gonna be doing on Friday night? Not sitting at home watching TV.
Along the lines of this new show ‘Revolution’, you must read “One Second After” by William Forstchen. I think MGM actually picked that up to be made into a movie. Anyhoo … it deals with the aftermath of a massive EMP attack on the US. I couldn’t put it down.
The Friday night audience is a weird weird thing. Several years ago, the X-Files did wel enough to survivel there. Dallas and Miami Vice were top 10 shows both at the same timne on Fridays attracting opposite audiences…
I think it more depends on what is run in those Friday night slots as opposed to it being a graveyard…Fringe is a fringe program to begin with in terms of who it appeals to.
Good point, Bob :)
I watch all three of those current “JJ shows.” I didn’t seek them out because of the Bad Robot logo; they are just excellent shows.
I consider far too much of this post-apocalypso concept to be unrealistic.
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Make every modern electronic device not work?
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Fine, we’ll go back to the age of Gutenberg and actually print things on offset press, with horse and carriage delivering goods locally, including the news. Are you telling me the STEAM ENGINE would no longer work? Because the U.S.A. pre-electrical, around the year 1900 was a pretty advanced society that didn’t need electricity and electronics, yet held a large country together pretty well.
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Maybe he should hire Newt Gingrich for some history lessons.
33: “Fine, we’ll go back to the age of Gutenberg and actually print things on offset press, with horse and carriage delivering goods locally, including the news. Are you telling me the STEAM ENGINE would no longer work? Because the U.S.A. pre-electrical, around the year 1900 was a pretty advanced society that didn’t need electricity and electronics, yet held a large country together pretty well.”
Yes but people a hundred years ago were far less dependent on sensitive electronic devices that could be critically affected and they knew how to survive without them. Today we consider all that old time knowledge obsolete.
Now you can’t even access cold hard cash without electronic devices giving it to you. Even if the teller opens her cash drawer, how will he or she know how much money you have in your account without her computer working? You can force the money out of her if the situation were desperate, and now you’ve become a bank robber. Everyone else of course feels the same way. Social collapse begins.
The groceries on your store shelves also require constant replenishment. There are no backroom supplies. You getting bread every week depends on the trucks that carry bread from the factories able to transport their cargo to your town and store shelves. And the factories making bread depends on them getting the supplies they need.
And once we have the good life of easy bread, we forget how to make it ourselves from scratch. We regard that as obsolete knowledge…until something like a modern day equivalent of the Carrington Event happens, when we will all wish we weren’t so stupid about how to survive worst case scenarios.
It works so long as there is no breakdown in a critical infrastructure that leads to cascading failures in other areas.
We live in an extremely precarious state without really knowing it.
He looks like a Vorta.
It’s weird about how big TV nights have changed… when I was a kid the love boat and fantasy island were huge on Sat night. I’m really wondering how long we’ll be tethered to broadcast nights anymore… the only thing I tend to watch live is sports now.
On another subject do you think JJ will get the Jonas bros as leads for the new show?
Yawn. This guy really has very little in the way of original ideas.
22. Gorn Born – February 4, 2012
I hated the new teaser for this Friday’s ‘Fringe’ which used the words ‘the beginning of the end.’
Hope they make a series based on the other universe related to this Stirling novel: “Island in the Sea of Time”. Much better story.