Okay, so follow this: Guillermo Del Toro conceived an updated version of DRACULA which he pitched as a network television series. Nobody picked it up, so he teamed with author Chuck Hogan to write THE STRAIN trilogy of novels. Now, those novels are being adapted as the TV series they were intended to be.
FX has ordered a pilot for THE STRAIN, which will be co-written, directed and executive produced by Del Toro. Hogan, who wrote the novel PRINCE OF THIEVES (inspiration for Ben Affleck’s THE TOWN), will co-write. The show will be run by Carlton Cuse, who oversaw LOST and the upcoming A&E series BATES’ MOTEL.
THE STRAIN was followed by THE FALL and THE NIGHT ETERNAL will be the source for the series which will have a limited run. Del Toro and FX plan to adapt the books into 5 or 6 television seasons.
Plot: A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold. In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city–a city that includes his wife and son–before it is too late.
The novels feel like a vampire version of THE WALKING DEAD. These vampires share more in common with the BLADE II vamps that Del Toro came up with. This could definitely make for quality genre television if FX approaches it with the same level that AMC brought to THE WALKING DEAD.
Del Toro says they will begin writing the screenplay at the end of the year with the pilot expected to shoot next September. Del Toro has indicated that he and Hogan will add story-lines they dropped when writing the novel and he hopes to direct as many episodes as his schedule allows.
What do you think of Del Toro’s first television series? Any STRAIN fans out there?