Amazon orders new sci-fi series based on some dystopian paintings

By Joe Berkowitz

We all laughed when Disney announced that its Pirates of the Caribbean ride would be adapted into a movie. We roared when we heard Lego had a film project in the works. The less said about The Emoji Movie the better. In any case, we’re now less skeptical when, say, Amazon gives a straight-to-series order for a sci-fi drama based on some critically adored computer illustrations.

 

Tales from the Loop is a forthcoming series based on the work of Swedish graphic artist Simon Stålenhag. Known for their vast industrial wastelands, littered with robot detritus and roving children, Stålenhag’s digital paintings were collected in 2015 for a successfully Kickstarted book. Now they will serve as visual inspiration for a series about a town of people living above The Loop, which according to the Hollywood Reporter is “a machine built to unlock and explore the mysteries of the universe, making things possible that were previously relegated to science fiction. In the fantastical, mysterious town, poignant human tales are told that bare universal emotional experiences while drawing on the intrigue of storytelling.”

Stålenhag’s previously made forays into other media by doing promotional artwork for the sci-fi video game No Man’s Sky, and immortalizing Donald Trump on Twitter.

The new series will be coproduced by Fox 21 TV Studios and Amazon Studios, with Legion‘s Nathaniel Halpern as showrunner and executive producer. Never Let Me Go director Mark Romanek is helming the pilot and will serve as executive producer, along with War for the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves and Swedish production and management company Indio.

Amazon has been raiding IP from every which direction lately to fatten up its Prime offerings. Other adaptations in the works include the upcoming Hanna (based on a 2011 Saoirse Ronan thriller), Modern Love (based on the long-running NYT column), and The Underground Railroad (based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel). Whether Tales from the Loop will lean closer to The Lego Movie than the emoji one remains to be seen.

 
 
 

 

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