Alex Proyas is developing a Dark City series and we’re officially stoked

A movie that I feel doesn’t get enough love is Alex Proyas’ 1998 sci-fi movie Dark City.

The movie focuses on Rufus Sewell’s John Murdoch who awakens in a strange hotel room with fractured memories of a beautiful wife played by the amazing Jennifer Connolly but who struggles to remember anything else al the while coming to the attention of a mad professor played by Keifer Sutherland while being stalked by bizarre humanoids who lurk around every dark corner.

It’s a neo-noir thriller that is the stuff of nightmares but is also a completely enthralling mystery that not only explores the case of Murdoch’s missing memories but blows apart the concept of reality and what our roles are within it. Plus Jennifer Connolly, left, is just stunning in it.

But now it seems that, as is the norm for any movie that was mildly interesting, the movie is being developed as a TV series but thankfully Proyas himself is involved.

In a new interview, Proyas was asked if he had any projects on the slate and he went straight to the news that Dark City is where he’s hoping to head next.

“Dark City right now is really an intriguing one to me because we’re developing a series, a Dark City series, which we’re in the very early stages [of] but I’m having to reanalyze in order to construct a new story,” he said.

“I’m having to go back and kind of jog my memory as to what we actually did and what I think worked and what I think didn’t work and reevaluate my own film, so that’s been a very interesting experience as well which I’ve not done before.”

 

Proyas went on to talk about the Director’s Cut of the movie that was released in 2008 and how, while it was closer to his planned movie, he was still unable to put his full vision out there for the fans to see: “You know, it [Dark City] tested very poorly and I was forced to do certain things I didn’t agree with and we made good to a certain extent in the director’s cut.

“Because you couldn’t completely resalvage it. I mean the whole point of a director’s cut is the illusion that we resalvage what we’ve done originally. But you can never do that. Often it’s just impossible. In those days we shot on neg and the negs being cut. And its been cut in a certain way and it’s very, very hard to go right back to what you originally designed.

“So you do like a hodgepodge version of it. Certainly it’s closer to my original conception than the theatrical cut was, but it is still not exactly what my original conception was. You would have to go right back to dailies to do something like that.”

It sounds like his new series will not see the return of any of the original cast but rather will see a whole new story set in the City with a whole new cast of characters and stories.

I was a big fan of Dark City when it first came out and I must admit I’ve not seen the Director’s Cut – truth be told, I didn’t know there was one and will be on Amazon after I write this to find a copy – and the idea of going back to the Dark City itself is a very welcome one; the idea of it being a series which can really explore that world and what it and its dark creators are really all about is a very welcome one indeed.

What do you all think? Let me know, guys…

Separated from his wife, Emma (Academy Award and Golden Globe-winner Jennifer Connelly — “A Beautiful Mind,” “Requiem for a Dream”), amnesiac John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell — TV’s “The Eleventh Hour,” “The Illusionist”) awakens alone in a strange hotel to learn he is wanted for a series of brutal murders, but he can’t remember if he committed them or not. Indeed, most of his memories have completely vanished, and he becomes the focus of interest for both “mad genius” Dr. Schreber (Emmy Award and Golden Globe-winner Kiefer Sutherland — TV’s “24,” “Phone Booth”) and sympathetic detective Frank Bumstead (Academy Award-winner William Hurt — “The Incredible Hulk,” “Broadcast News”). Attempting to unravel the twisted riddle of his identity, Murdoch encounters a group of ominous beings known as the “Strangers,” shadow-like figures who have collective memory and posses the ability to stop time and alter physical reality through a process called “The Tuning.”

Source: BloodyDisgusting