Back in May I mentioned that A&E was developing Michael Crichton's book The Andromeda Strain into a miniseries. The network recently announced the cast, which includes Benjamin Bratt, Rick Schroder, Eric McCormack, Viola Davis, Christa Miller, Andre Braugher, Daniel Dae Kim, and Ted Whittall.
The Andromeda Strain, which was also made into a feature film in 1971, tells the story of a deadly plague brought back to Earth from space on a satellite that crashes in Utah. The virus kills off almost everyone in a small town except for an old man and an infant. Scientists are forced to race against time to stop the plague from spreading.
Bratt has the lead role as epidemiologist Jeremy Stone, who leads a team of scientists in trying to stop the plague and immunize the population against it. The miniseries also includes McCormack as a reporter, Schroder as a virologist, Miller as a surgeon and expert in exotic diseases, Braugher as a US Army Biochemical Research officer, Kim as a microbiologist, and Davis as a pathologist. Whittall plays the President of the United States, a southern conservative.
The four-hour miniseries is currently in production. It's produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, directed by Mikael Solomon (Rome and Nightmares and Dreamscapes) and written by Robert Schenkkan (The Quiet American).
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-14-2007 @ 4:23PM
Borat said...
I've always thought that book adaptations would be better as a mini-series rather than as a movie.
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7-14-2007 @ 6:16PM
Akbar Fazil said...
Andre Braugher and Benjamin Bratt alone make me interested in this thing but add in Daniel Dae Kim? Awesome.
This is a remake/retelling I am 100% behind. Updating the story with some more modern science and it can still be great. I agree with Borat, I wish we could see more books as mini-series (or even a 13 episode season) instead of tepid movies that barely scratch the surface of a book.
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7-14-2007 @ 10:12PM
Michael said...
Actually Borat & Akbar, the original film is one of the VERY few movies that was almost perfectly adapted from the book. There were basically only two slight changes made and nothing left out in the original film. They made one of the scientists a woman instead of having an all male team and then had lasers instead of curare darts to track escaped animals in the core. I can't think of any other film adaptation that was as close to the book than this one was.
I really am praying that this turns out well. It has all the right ingredients, down to the director and producers but that doesn't always mean much in the end. I loved this book and it made me a Crichton fan for life. I'm afraid that by adding an additional two hours to the timeline that the pacing will suffer. One of the strong points of the original was the sense of urgency to solve what Andromeda was. By adding this much filler to the story, I believe they will be unable to sustain the level of tension the way the book and original film did so well. Otherwise I agree wholeheartedly that most adaptations need far more time for plot and character development. I just don't see it being that necessary with this one. It's been proven otherwise.
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7-15-2007 @ 2:45AM
ecrates said...
"I can't think of any other film adaptation that was as close to the book than this one was."
' Being There ' novel by jerzy kozinski... movie starring peter sellers... i think is the benchmark for film adaptation
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7-15-2007 @ 12:02PM
J8675309 said...
Saw the movie and read the book, both pretty good.
I just may watch this.
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7-17-2007 @ 12:35PM
TomB said...
The '71 movie was excellent! I never read the book, though.
I'll check out the mini series but I've never been a fan of remaking movies that were excellent to begin with.
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