Amazon Dives Into Sci-Fi With Adaptations Of ‘Ringworld’, ‘Lazarus’ And ‘Snow Crash’
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Netflix may still be leading the way in the volume and overall quality of original streaming content, but Hulu is catching up quickly, especially after their Emmy win for Outstanding Drama Series forThe Handmaid’s Tale. Meanwhile, Amazon Studios still has a lot of work to do if they’re going to keep up.
While Amazon has found great success withTransparent, the rest of their shows have generally failed to make as big of a splash as the more popular shows from Netflix and Hulu. But Amazon hopes to change that by diving into a handful of genre titles, specifically in the realm of science fiction. Find out about the new Amazon sci-fi shows below.
Deadlinehas word on three new shows in development at Amazon, all in the sci-fi genre. There’s an adaptation of Larry Niven’s classicRingworld, an adaptation of Greg Rucka and Michael Lark’s comic bookLazarus, and the cult novelSnow Crashby Neal Stephenson. If you’re not familiar with any of these titles, we’ll break each of them down briefly below.
Larry Niven’s novelRingworldhails from the 1970s with a story set on Earth in the year 2850. The story follows a man named Louis Gridley Wu, celebrating his 200th birthday. Wu has become bored with humanity, as he does from time to time, so he takes a mysterious job that puts alongside two alien beings and a human woman as they explore Ringworld, a remote artificial ring beyond “Known Space” that still remains a mystery to the universe.
Funnily enough, the series was once in development as a miniseries at SyFy in 2013 around the same time thatThe Man in the High Castlewas part of SyFy’s development slate. WhileRingworldnever moved forward,The Man in the High Castleended up landing at Amazon as one of the pillars of their original programming.Ringworldis even more high concept thanThe Man in the High Castleand will likely be much more expensive, so it’ll be interesting to see how Amazon brings it to life.
WhileRingworldis set in the future,Greg Rucka’sLazaruscomic seriesis set in an alternative near-future where the world has been split into 16 familial factions. With the world run as a feudal system, each family has their respective allies and enemies, creating various conflicts and wars. The title comes from the fact that most families have their own Lazarus, a one-person kill squad.
While that sounds like it has the potential forGame of Thrones-level drama, the story primarily follows Forever Carlyle, who is the military leader for the Carlyle family, known for their various developments in genetic technology. This includes creating modified seeds that provide food for most of the world and altering their own genetics, which allows all of them to grow old without suffering the consequences of age.
There’s certainly a lot of potential to create a compelling sci-fi world with this story, and the comic series is still ongoing, so there’s still plenty of story left to tell. Here’s hoping Amazon, MGM, and executive producersGreg Rucka, Michael Lark, and newcomerAngela Cheng Caplancan do something worthwhile with this.
Snow Crash
Finally, Amazon is teaming with Paramount Television for a sci-fi drama series based onNeal Stephenson’s novelSnow Crash. Set in futuristic America, the cyberpunk-style story is set in a world where the federal government has given up most of its power and territory to private organizations and entrepreneurs.
We follow a hacker with the totally subtle name of Hiro Protagonist as he delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., a pizza place owned by the mafia. But Hiro also has a presence in the virtual world known as the Metaverse, where he’s a warrior prince who gets caught up in a dangerous plot involving a computer virus that has the potential to destroy the minds of citizens in the real world, starting with hackers like Hiro.
There are surface similarities toReady Player Onehere (althoughSnow Crashpredates that book by years and offers up a very different tone), so it remains to be seen if audiences will be ready for another virtual world story like this so soon after that movie hits theaters in March of 2018. Presumably, it will be awhile beforeSnow Crashgets off the ground, so it could be able to stand on its own by then. It helps that there’s some great talent behind it, includingAttack the BlockdirectorJoe Cornishexecutive producing withFrank Marshall(Indiana Jones, Back to the Future). This could end up being a big deal.
Amazon definitely needs to make some big moves in order to keep up with the likes of Netflix and Hulu, so hopefully at least one of these sci-fi shows ends up catching fire and getting the attention of the masses. We can never have too much great sci-fi at one time.
Which of these three hopeful shows sounds the most interesting to you?
