One has to wonder how executives at Paramount are feeling today as ecstatic reviews for “Annihilation” have rolled in. The studio sold off the international rights to Alex Garland’s brainy sci-fi movie to Netflix, choosing to hang on to the picture in the United States, Canada, and China (they thought the movie was “too intellectual“). We’ll see if the decision comes back to haunt them, but for the director, it’s a big victory. Undoubtedly, franchise scripts are going to start landing on his doorstep with increasing frequency, but before he decides on his next big screen effort, he’s going to television.
A couple weeks back it was revealed that Garland was working on a sci-fi series for FX that, fingers crossed, would get in front of cameras this year. Details were scarce, but the writer/director said it had “more in common with projects I’ve worked on like ‘Ex Machina‘ or ‘Never Let Me Go,’ which are taking something about our world now….and then drawing sort of inferences and conclusions from it.” Now she’s shared a little more about what the project is about.
Titled “Devs” (as in “developers”), it sounds like “Silicon Valley,” if it were a drama (with perhaps a dash of “Halt And Catch Fire“).
“It’s about a particular aspect of technology at the moment which is to do with very, very big data and very powerful processing power, and what can happen when you put those two things together. It’s set in San Francisco, a sort of tech story,” Garland explained to Collider.
Right now, the eight-episode series is conceived as a self-contained narrative, though Garland says there are ways it can possibly be expanded, if that’s what the powers that be want. If all goes according to plan, production will begin in about six months, possibly with Garland directing all the episodes. Fingers crossed.