After stumbling through a difficult and ultimately frustrating film development process, the adaptation of Justin Cronin's vampire trilogy The Passage was yanked from the big screen pipeline by producer Ridley Scott and instead aimed at television. Now US network Fox has ordered a pilot for the show.
Elizabeth Heldens is the person who will be in charge of writing the pilot and running the potential show, while Matt Reeves – who had been developing the movie version – will call the shots for the launch episode.
The story kicks off with a group of terminally ill cancer patients who suddenly recover after being bitten by South American bats. Cue the government seeing the possibilities of this as a cure, and the disastrous results, with a powerful group of telepathic vampires roaming the country and infecting the rest of humanity. Ambitiously, the series will span a century and focuses on a girl named Amy who must save humanity.
Fox 2000 actually picked the rights to Cronin's first book in 2007, back when he initially pitched the idea to publishers via a 400 page sample and the outline for more of a story. Since then, the trilogy has arrived in full, with two tomes published in 2016 alone.