Remember the futuristic film, “Gattaca”, starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law that came out in 1997? Denis Leary, Jim Serpico and company at Apostle Films are planning on producing an hour-long police procedural based on the film directed by Andrew Niccol. At the writer’s desk will be writer/producer, Gil Grant (24, NCIS) .
You may recall that the futuristic film posed the scenario of “What if you could genetically engineer humans and chose the traits of your child?” While the 1997 film didn’t rake it in at the box office, it attracted a cult following. A world in which your opportunities are limited because of your genetic code is ripe material for a weekly procedural show. Grant describes this new interpretation of the world of “Gattaca”:
“I came up with a world which is populated with Valids and Invalids [(Valids being people genetically designed and Invalids for those naturally born)], the same premise [as the movie], but taken into a police department where we’re… integrating, using the analogy of the ‘60s Civil Rights struggle. Even though it’s technically illegal to discriminate against Invalids, just like in the ‘60s people did. So it’s come to pass that [the government has] ordered the police department to hire their first token Invalid into the detective department. What we’re doing is we’re taking an Invalid and teaming him up with a Valid, a seasoned officer. You know, it’s oil and water.”
On possible plotlines of the show, Grant says that it will be January or February before there might even be a script, but he has ideas:
“… I think it’s more episodic, but… you carry some personal arcs along. The Invalid character I see as having a Valid girlfriend, and she’s dating him for all the wrong reasons. And I think that the Valid, the older detective, has some problems in his personal life that you follow through. Then you’ve got the captain of the police department who’s forced to hire this [Invalid]. Whether or not we have an over-reaching, bigger story arc, I’m not sure. I tend to think not.”
Although Andrew Niccol, director of the original film, is not involved in this project as of now, but Grant and company are guided by his work in “Gattaca”:
“I would use a great deal of the world and the nomenclature and the art direction, the feel of it, the music. It’s just such a beautiful film, and really cool. I think you do as much of that as you can do, but set it at a police department. Then you get all the crimes and all the tension that’s built up with Valids being accused of something they didn’t do, all the forensic science that would be new and much more advanced than we have new. I can see it easily moving into a police procedural.”
Grant adds that it will be highly unlikely that they will use any of the original film’s characters:
“I think we do our own thing. It’s different all together. I think it would be in some ways truer to the film to just [set things in a] different corner of the world and not try to re-cast an existing character.”
[Commentary]
I for one, really enjoyed the 1997 “Gattaca” for its near possible future storyline, look of the film, and of course, its beautifully sober soundtrack. I hope that this project does get off the ground because we are so close to this type of technology. We need to ask these questions. How will our society change because of this God-like tech?
I’m so glad to hear that they will draw upon the film’s art direction and music. Those elements made “Gattaca” unique and stand out from other futuristic films. The clean, crisp, deliberate hand to every visual element of the film reveal a breath-taking, refined, and very tightly constrained world. You can tell by this collage of scenes from the film below how fiercely architectural everything looks, from the locations to costuming, to the framing of the scenes. :drools: Now, this is the type of project I’d like to lend a hand to!
[Source] MTV
