Author Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy is heading to television, under the title of its first novel Red Mars.
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After the recent news that J. Michael Straczynski was boarding the Red Mars project for Spike, we’ve now gotten the news from the cable network that they’ve given the property a straight-to-series order of ten episodes. Straczynski is best known for creating and showrunning Babylon 5 and, more recently, for showrunning Netflix drama Sense8 with the Wachowski siblings. Vince Gerardis, co-executive producer of Game of Thrones, will also serve as executive producer on Red Mars with Straczynski.
Sharon Levy, executive vice president of original series at Spike, said in a statement, “This group of strangers must find a way to live together and survive under the most daunting conditions mankind has ever faced to become the first living generation of Martians”.
As the nation’s bro-iest network, I would have been wary of any Spike adaptation of science fiction, but between JMS and Spike’s shocking support for the show even in its most nascent stages, I’d say there’s a good possibility of Red Mars the TV show being watchable at minimum. While this is being labelled as a “Red Mars” adaptation, it’s likely that any form of success for the initial episodes of the show will see the adaptation stretch to Robinson’s entire “Mars” trilogy, which sees humanity successfully terraform Mars into a lush, water-laden planet. The novels have won Nebula and Hugo awards and have a solid fanbase out there. This past July, Spike premiered “Tut”, its first original scripted miniseries in nearly a decade to strong ratings, averaging 2.2 million viewers over three nights.
Red Mars Concept: John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. The Company’s first original series, the Emmy-award winning Manhattan, has been met with great critical acclaim and airs on WGN America and Hulu.
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The text of Green Mars and cover art for Red Mars also got included on a DVD carried by NASA’s Phoenix lander that touched down on Mars in 2008 as part of the first interplanetary library, meant for discovery by future Mars explorers.
