You’d be forgiven for thinking that US TV network FX’s adaptation of the Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers was dead. After all, the network made a pilot back in 2011 starring Jason Patric… and then nothing. But it seems the show could still make it to air, although not in a form based on that pilot. IGN has revealed in an interview with FX’s president, John Landgraf that the show is being completely retooled and that horror author Charlie Huston ( Joe Pitt Casebooks ) could be the new showrunner…
“No, still alive,” says Landgraf of the show, which would be about two homicide detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, assigned to investigate cases involving people with superhuman abilities. “We’ve been through so many incarnations. After we made the pilot, we actually developed three more [episode] scripts. So then we had a pilot plus three scripts, and we decided between the pilot and the scripts that it wasn’t quite the series that we needed it to be.
“When I say we, by the way, Brian Bendis is involved in every phase of this conversation and discussion. But one of the scripts was written by this guy named Charlie Huston, and he was a novelist. Both I and Brian and others thought, ‘Wow, there is actually something in the tone of this.’ So Charlie was approached, I think by Brian, and said, ‘Look, would you be interested in taking on Powers ?’ And Charlie said, ‘Well, I’ve never actually adapted anything before in my life. I have only written novels and stuff of my own, but Powers is my favorite graphic novel, and yes!’
“So what ended up happening was we reconstituted the whole thing around Charlie as the creator, with Brian. Charlie went up to Seattle, and they sat down and they talked, and read through all the books, and they came back with a new vision, basically. Essentially, a new pilot to begin with, which is a new, different story than the pilot that we shot. So that pilot is officially gone and dead, and the actors are all gone, but we’re developing a whole new pilot from scratch.”
