Fox Orders A Pilot For THE PASSAGE
Fox has ordered a pilot of the adaption of Justin Cronin’s fantasy book The Passage (you can read our review here). The hour-long drama will be penned by writers Elizabeth Heldens (Friday Night Lights) and Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves, who also wrote and directed the US remake of the Swedish vampire drama Let Me In.
The Passage is the first book of Cronin’s New York Times best-selling trilogy, published in 2010. It was followed by The Twelve in 2012 and The City of Mirrors in 2016.
The story starts as a character driven government conspiracy thriller that transforms into a post-apocalyptic saga with vampires. The series spans over a century and focuses on a young girl who must save the human race.
The journey for the show started in 2007 when Fox 2000 purchased rights on the first book, only half written, for $1.75 million. When it was decided this would be a better television venture, they passed it over to Fox 20th Century to produce with Scott Free Protections.
As the vampire genre is thinning out, studios are looking for new stories, especially to replace The CW’s The Vampire Diaries and its spinoff, The Originals, which may or may not get a next season). Currently, The CW is developing a reboot of The Lost Boys.
The Passage is the fifth pilot to be picked up by Fox for the upcoming 2017-2018 season. So far, they have orders for Ghosted, starring Craig Robinson and Adam Scott, Linda From HR, Liz Meriwethers’s Thin Ice, and an X-Men pilot from Matt Nix and director Bryan Singer.
Other projects currently on the air from Scott Free Productions include The Man in the High Castle, Mercy Street, Taboo, and The Terror.
