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Tag: J. Michael Straczynski

  • Netflix’s Sense8 Expected To Go On For Five Seasons

    Fans of Netflix’s Sense8 may be in for a solid five-year run of the show if it turns out to be in Netflix’s best interest.

    Obviously, the show doesn’t really have any fans yet since it’s not actually out yet, but if it does find a substantial audience (and there’s a pretty good chance it will), fans will be able to expect years of the show to come.

    In an interview with Zap2it, writer J. Michael Straczynski was asked if Sense8 is meant to have more than one season if that’s what Netflix wants.

    He responded, “We pitched it as a five-year story. We’ve mapped out five seasons of this thing, our actor deals are being made for five seasons, five or six depending on the breaks. So we imagined this over the long, long haul. The first season is the origin story for our characters and then we kind of go from there.”

    As long as things continue to go as well for Netflix with its originals as it has so far, it seems likely that the company will play this thing out for the full run. So far, they’ve been actively renewing their originals (none that we know of have been canceled yet). But the likelihood goes even further than that.

    Netflix goes out of its way to give shows conclusions. Even shows from other networks. As you may know, the company recently acquired the fourth and final season of AMC’s The Killing essentially so it could give the show a proper conclusion after AMC decided to cancel it prematurely.

    The reasoning is that it is in Netflix’s best interest for the shows it offers people to have conclusions. A show with an actual conclusion is worth more to the company simply because more people are likely to watch the show if it has one. Who wants to start something that they know doesn’t have an end (especially when there are already so many viewing options)?

    Now that doesn’t necessarily mean Netflix won’t force an earlier conclusion to Sense8 if things don’t work out as well as planned, but if a five-season story is what was pitched from the get go, that’s probably a good sign that Netflix is already expecting to be in this for the long haul.

    Sense8 comes from some big names in sci-fi with Straczynski as well as Andy and Lana Wachowski (of The Matrix fame) behind it. Straczynski is the guy who created Babylon 5. He’s also a longtime comic book writer. The point is these names alone have their built-in audiences. Sense8 will probably have to be a huge dud not to gain a substantial enough audience for Netflix to deem it not worthy of continuation.

    From the sound of it, it’s going to be an incredibly grand project. So far, they’re still in the writing phase, and a 2015 debut is looking more and more likely.

    Image via Netflix

  • Netflix’s Sense8 Is Still In The Writing Phase

    Things seem to be moving along fairly slowly with Sense8, the upcoming science fiction project at Netflix.

    Netflix announced the show back in March, 2013. The company indicated it would debut in late 2014. It’s not looking like that’s going to happen.

    Netflix said in a letter to investors attached to its quarterly earnings release that it is now scheduled for 2015.

    Writer J. Michael Straczynski gave an interview ti Zap2it, and indicated that they’re not even finished writing it yet, let alone shooting it (which sounds like will be a monumental task on its own).

    “In broad strokes, at this moment, we are almost done with all the scripts and the long process of refining all the different cultures we’re going to be using in the course of the show and making sure the scripts are just tight and really refined. The last scripts should be finalized by the end of [February],” he said. “We start shooting in late June, early July, starting with San Francisco. We’ll be shooting in a number of different countries — the U.S.; London; Berlin; Seoul, South Korea; Iceland; Mexico City; Nairobi and Mumbai, which is amazing.”

    “We’re in the process of prepping now, we have location scouts working overtime to find really good places locations for the shoot,” he added. “We have a casting director doing a bunch of casting now, holding auditions, narrowing down our possibilities. It’s going to be a big show and the cool thing about it is no one’s ever done this kind of thing before.”

    You can learn more about how ambitious the project is here. To give you an idea, Straczynski has said the Wachowskis (who are the co-creators of the project) are trying to do for television what they did for film with The Matrix.

    Straczynski still said Sense8 could debut in either 2014 or 2015, but it seems like the latter is much more likely.

    Image via Wikimeda Commons

  • New Details About Netflix’s Sense8 Reported

    Netflix acquired the exclusive rights to a new sci-fi thriller series called Sense8 last year. The series comes from the Wachowskis (of The Matrix fame) and Babylon 5 writer J. Michael Straczynski.

    For most of the time that has passed since the announcement, very little has been known about the plot, though Straczynski shared a bit in an interview in September.

    To recap, these are some things he said at the time, speaking to Comic Book Resources.

    “The series is contemporaneous with current events,” he explains. “It is somewhat science fiction in some respects. It concerns eight characters around the world, who are joined telepathically with each other, or empathically, and those who are after them and hunting them to try and stop this next evolution. And the cool thing is that we’re gonna shoot this in the countries that the stories are taking place.”

    He said that shooting will take place in Mumbai, Nairobi, London, Mexico, the U.S., Germany, and possibly Russia.

    “This is gonna be a show that will be shot around the world simultaneously,” he says. “We’re gonna have five different units shooting at the same time to tell the story, and it’s gonna be ridiculously huge, and the cool thing about working with the Wachowskis…when they did The Matrix, they didn’t want to do a show like anything else they’d ever seen before, and The Matrix created a whole new cinema language. And they said, ‘If we’re gonna do television, then we have to do the same thing. We have to create a whole new vocabulary for television production…for television, which you can do in TV. And so coming into this, working with them, we’re pioneering some new techniques and new approaches in television storytelling. It’s quite extraordinary.”

    Here’s the full interview:

    TVLine is now reporting that the eight characters are connected by a shared “violent” vision, and that among the so far uncast regulars are “a closeted Mexican telenovela hunk, an Icelandic party girl, a German safe-cracker, a Korean businesswoman, an African bus driver and a transgender American blogger,” as well as a villain named Mr. Whispers.

    Each episode, according to this report, will follow characters’ separate stories, and are shot in the UK, Seoul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Berlin, Mexico City, San Francisco and Chicago.

    The Wachowskis said a few months ago that pre-production would begin in January.

    “We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy,” the Wachowskis said when the project was first announced. “Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

    If nothing else, the show should be visually pleasing. In addition to Straczynski’s comments, Netflix announced at CES that all of its original shows will be produced in 4K.

    Image via Image: Anna Hanks (Flickr/Wikimedia Commons)

  • Netflix’s ‘Sense8’ To Begin Pre-Production In January

    While we’re not going to be seeing it for probably another year or better, the wheels are in motion for Netflix’s ambitious science fiction series Sense8.

    Netflix announced the show back in in March. It will debut with a ten-episode season, and is slated for a release in late 2014. During the company’s earnings call last week, Netflix said it’s still expected to release at that time, but it is subject to change, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we won’t see it until 2015.

    Either way, it will begin the pre-production phase in January, according to the Wachowskis (of The Mattix fame), who are working on the project with Babylon 5‘s J. Michael Straczynski.

    In an interview about their upcoming movie Jupiter Ascending, the Wachowskis reportedly said as much.

    When the project was first announced, the Wachowskis said, “We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy. Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

    While still few details are known about the plot, we’ve learned the most about it so far from an interview Straczynski gave to Comic Book Resources last month.

    “The series is contemporaneous with current events,” he said at the time. “It is somewhat science fiction in some respects. It concerns eight characters around the world, who are joined telepathically with each other, or empathically, and those who are after them and hunting them to try and stop this next evolution. And the cool thing is that we’re gonna shoot this in the countries that the stories are taking place.”

    Based on what Straczynski had to say about it, they’re trying to do for television what The Matrix did for film.

    Image: Anna Hanks (Flickr/Wikimedia Commons)

  • Netflix’s ‘Sense8’ Hopes To Do For TV What ‘The Matrix’ Did For Film

    Earlier this year, we learned that Netflix secured the exclusive rights to a new sci-fi thriller series called Sense8, which comes from the Wachowskis (of The Matrix fame) and Babylon 5 writer J. Michael Straczynski.

    So far, little is known about the plot, but there’s a good reason for that. Straczynski talked a little bit about the show in an interview with Comic Book Resources:

    “We wrote the first three scripts on our own,” he says. “We specced it out, brought it to Netflix, and the funny thing is we had four days of pitches planned. Netflix was our first meeting at I think 11:00AM on a Tuesday, and then we were gonna go to HBO….”

    By 2:00, he said, Netflix had called and said they wanted the show.

    “The series is contemporaneous with current events,” he explains. “It is somewhat science fiction in some respects. It concerns eight characters around the world, who are joined telepathically with each other, or empathically, and those who are after them and hunting them to try and stop this next evolution. And the cool thing is that we’re gonna shoot this in the countries that the stories are taking place.”

    He said that shooting will take place in Mumbai, Nairobi, London, Mexico, the U.S., Germany, and possibly Russia.

    “This is gonna be a show that will be shot around the world simultaneously,” he says. “We’re gonna have five different units shooting at the same time to tell the story, and it’s gonna be ridiculously huge, and the cool thing about working with the Wachowskis…when they did The Matrix, they didn’t want to do a show like anything else they’d ever seen before, and The Matrix created a whole new cinema language. And they said, ‘If we’re gonna do television, then we have to do the same thing. We have to create a whole new vocabulary for television production…for television, which you can do in TV. And so coming into this, working with them, we’re pioneering some new techniques and new approaches in television storytelling. It’s quite extraordinary.”

    When asked about how they convinced Netflix to put up a budget for this kind of thing, he says, “The international marketplace is a large part of this certainly. We had to come at them with a production model that said we can control the costs on this. We start shooting in Chicago, doing our stuff on set, jump out, blow out the set, jump out to locations in and around Chicago, then we jump out to our individual locations having four or five units shooting at the same time….mainly outside locations….using local production teams – camera teams – so that each area has its own distinct look, and we did the budget, worked it out, and said we can make this for this kind of money, and they said, ‘Go for it.’”

    He didn’t give any figures, but it certainly makes you wonder just how large the budget for this project is. It’s even more interesting to consider in light of recent comments from Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who said last week, that Netflix will be doubling its budget for original content over the coming years.

    “Each episode cuts back and fourth though,” Straczynski says of the Sense8 format. “Your anchor is the original stuff you started with on set. That kind of sets your style and your tone…”

    He says each location will have its own look, but the set stuff will provide a general continuity.

    He said he wouldn’t go much beyond that in terms of the plot, because “they like to keep things very close to the vest,” and he supports that. He says that’s why there isn’t much online about the story.

    “What we’re doing is really kind of new and innovative,” he said, adding that he didn’t want to have someone else eat their lunch.

    He did say he’ll be directing the London sequence. They’ll be shooting about three weeks in London next year.

    “Andy and Lana Wachowski and Joe Straczynski are among the most imaginative writers and gifted visual storytellers of our time,” said Sarandos when the project was announced. “Their incredible creations are favorites of Netflix members globally and we can’t wait to bring Sense8 to life.”

    “We’re excited to work with Netflix and Georgeville Television on this project, and we’ve wanted to work with Joe Straczynski for years, chiefly due to the fact his name is harder to pronounce than ours, but also because we share a love of genre and all things nerdy,” said Andy and Lana Wachowski in a joint statement at the time. “Several years ago, we had a late night conversation about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us, and out of that paradox Sense8 was born.”

    So far, Netflix has hardly disappointed with its original content offerings, and from the sound of it, Sense8 could its most ambitious project yet. It’s hard to say when we’ll see the first season debut, since it doesn’t even start shooting until next year, but it’s scheduled for sometime in late 2014. It will start with ten episodes.

    Image: Comic Book Resources