Writer Neil Gaiman has become—through many years of stellar, imaginative, genre-defining works of fiction—a major name in narrative of all sorts. Be it novels or comics or TV or film, when Gaiman is attached to a project, we sit up and take notice, a quality that few writers can claim to have. This is why we’re particularly intrigued by Deadline‘s latest report that he is currently working with Angry Films on a sci-fi series called The Building, being developed by 20th Century Fox TV.
The project sounds a bit convoluted, but here is what we’ve gathered so far: The Building is based on the digital film Parallels, written and directed by Chris Leone from a story by Leone and Laura Harkom, which was very successful on Netflix. The television show has been written by Leone and Albert Kim and involves a large skyscraper that can travel between alternate realities, and a group of “young urban explorers” who are in the building and suddenly find themselves on an Earth where Reagan lost the election and Russia dropped the bomb (oh boy, too real at this moment). They then realize they have a limited amount of time to rescue their comrades and get back to the building before it shifts again.
So, this sounds and awful lot like Sliders to me, with the heroes never knowing which Earth they’re going to next and having a finite time in each reality (perhaps an episode or two’s worth?), but there’s going to be the added wrinkle of the mystery of what the Building is and who built it.
Gaiman and Leone (who worked together on the development of The Building) will executive produce alongside Kim (who will serve as showrunner) and Angry Films’ Don Murphy and Susan Montford.
This could be a very intriguing prospect for everyone involved, and really having Gaiman involved in any way makes this at the very least a show to check out when it finally materializes. What do you think of the news? Have you seen Parallels? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Image: Fox Digital
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!
