SHOWRUNNER EXCLUSIVE
Loving The Alien
The Man Who Fell to Earth gets updated as a series reflecting our times
Faraday (Chiwetel Ejiofor) makes his debut.
WHEN IT COMES TO determining great science fiction storytelling, the frequency at which a piece is rediscovered and reinterpreted by new generations is certainly a reasonable measuring stick. In the case of The Man Who Fell To Earth, Walter Tevis’s 1963 sci-fi novel spawned the 1976 film adaptation of the same name, a TV movie in 1987, the 2015 musical Lazarus, and now a streaming series starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomie Harris and Bill Nighy.
ROEG MALE
This latest iteration is the creative collaboration of executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet and John Hlavin, who used both the novel and director Nicolas Roeg’s film to inspire their contemporary iteration.
“The book is extraordinary in so many ways because it’s a science fiction book in which the science fiction is really off to the side,” Alex Kurtzman tells Red Alert, explaining his admiration of the novel. “It’s a deep exploration of loneliness, as Tevis was battling his own demons when he wrote that book. He felt a tremendous alienation and I think created the character of Thomas Jerome Newton as a kind of shadow version of himself, in a way. I believe he was working out his inner demons and that is why it’s so powerful.”