By Nathalie Caron, Source: Blastr.com
If you’re bummed that NBC’s Chuck will soon begin to air its final season, this news may cheer you up: Chuck producer and co-creator Josh Schwartz will next tackle a U.S. remake of the UK’s coolest little sci-fi drama superhero series ever — Misfits.
According to Vulture spies:
Fake Empire, the Warner Bros. TV-based production company Schwartz runs with partner Stephanie Savage, has just finalized a deal for the rights to the show, which revolves around a group of working-class teens who find themselves endowed with superpowers following an electrical storm. (Think the good, first season of Heroes with Buffy-esque snark and a similar Scooby-ish gang). Schwartz will team up with U.K. Misfits creator Howard Overman to write a U.S. translation. There’s no network attached as of yet, but given the response to the original series, it’s hard not to imagine it finding a Stateside TV home.
So, Overman’s pulling a Toby Whithouse here (Whithouse is the BBC’s Being Human creator and showrunner; he’s also overseeing SyFy’s popular American take on ”the vampire, werewolf and ghost all living together” series) by overseeing the U.S. remake of his original UK series.
However, Overman and Schwartz will be going a different route than the traditional development process. Instead of having a network buy a pitch and later deciding whether to film the pilot, they will be writing the new Misfits within the next couple of months, and then shopping it to networks by the end of this year or, most likely, early in 2012.
For those who’ve had the chance to see Misfits on Hulu, you’ll know that it is, simply put, totally awesome. And Hulu watchers have definitely taken notice, with the series garnering an impressive 9 million views to date.
For those who’ve never seen or heard of Misfits before, we can tell you that it’s a very witty sci-fi series; that it’s clever, hilarious, irreverent, and sexy, with some of the most foul mouthed characters ever to grace TV. Their superhero costumes? The orange ASBO suit.
They also possess some of the weirdest and coolest super-powers ever, ranging from driving someone into a sexual frenzy simply by touching them (Yes, you heard that right — and it may not be as fun as you might think) to time travel; telepathy; invisibility and immortality. The special effects are never ”in your face”; it’s the great storylines and the fantastic characters that drive the series.
Our only fear is that the show may be toned down a bit for the American audiences — which, if that’s the case, would be a shame. What makes Misfits work, is all that we’ve stated above. But with Overman and Schwartz at the helm (both of them writing and serving as executive producers), we have high hopes that an American version could be quite as fun and entertaining as Misfits consistently is.
What do you think?
