After Akiva Goldsman partnered with MGM last year to develop an adaptation of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, the series is moving forward as Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones, Thor: The Dark World) has signed on to helm the pilot, according to Collider.
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Originally published in 1970, Ringworld focuses on Louis Gridley Wu, who is celebrating turning 200 in a technologically advanced Earth in the distant future but finds himself perpetually bored and decides to accept an offer to join a woman and two aliens on a journey to explore Ringworld, the remote artificial ring beyond “Known Space.” The original novel spawned three sequels in 1980, 1996 and 2004, as well as four companion novels from 2007 to 2012, with the most recent being co-written by Niven and Edward M. Lerner.
Pick up the original novel here!
In an interview with Collider, Goldsman revealed he’s actively working on writing the pilot for the Ringworld adaptation and that he’s had recent conversations with Amazon and MGM executives about notes on the project, while also expressing some concern about the project’s current languishing in development since Amazon acquired the rights to the novel in 2017. While he didn’t reveal what Amazon’s strategy is for bringing the series to life and capturing the attention of audiences, he did note their past with large-scale projects and how it should help with the adaptation.
“I don’t know what Amazon is looking for, but they seem to like these larger objects that have scope and scale, if you [go] all the way back to that initial play with Man in the High Castle,” Goldsman said. “I think that these big, comprehensive universes, there are very few of them still available, and I certainly think Known Space is one of them, for those of us who were Larry Niven fans in our high school days. Niven’s world, his universe, dare I say, is incredibly complex and nuanced, and Ringworld has always been this entry point. Better minds than mine have tried to crack it, but hopefully we’ll do it this time.”
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Taylor is not stranger to the worlds of big budgets, sci-fi/fantasy or television, as his filmography includes everything from The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome and Game of Thrones to Thor: The Dark World and Terminator: Genisys. His next project is the prequel film to the HBO crime series, The Many Saints of Newark, which was originally set to bow this September before being pushed back to March 2021 due to global events.
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