The SyFy Network is bringing the amazing Terry Gilliam movie 12 Monkeys to the small screen in a new TV show that is supposed to debut early in 2015. However, co-executive producer Terry Matalas revealed that the television series would be a complete reimagining of the original movie. As a huge fan of the original movie, that isn’t the best of news.
But it isn’t a surprise.
The 12 Monkeys movie was itself loosely based on the short film La Jetée. That original short was an art film that was shot almost entirely as still photographs and told the story of time travel in a post-nuclear war society. Everyone lives underground in this future and scientists want to send people to the past and future in order to save the present. They chose a prisoner. By the end, he saves the present day society, but learns he is to be executed and fleas to the past again, where he is murdered in front of his younger self.
Many of these themes and concepts play into Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, where Bruce Willis plays a prisoner in the future where the world has become almost uninhabitable for humans. He is sent back to the past to find out what caused this, as the scientists in the future believes it was a group known as the 12 Monkeys. The ending is the same as in La Jetée, but Gilliam’s movie does not involve time travel to the future as the original movie did.
According to Matalas, the SyFy series will play about the same, borrowing ideas from the 12 Monkeys movie, but not telling the same story. “This isn’t a cover band of the film,” added star Amanda Schull. Co-executive producer Travis Fickett added that “It doesn’t make sense to tell the same story again.”
This time around, there will be trips to different time eras as well, including World War I and the 1980s. Does this sound like something you could get behind? Will you give the 12 Monkeys TV show a chance? Chime in below with your thoughts.