Showtime Is Developing A 'Gattaca' Sequel TV Series

If you felt weird seeing a True Lies TV series adaptation on CBS this season, as short-lived as it was, get ready for what might be next. There's a Gattaca TV series in development at Showtime, based on the 1997 film that starred Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

It comes from faces familiar to Showtime, even as the network undergoes a shift in identity and programming strategy. Homeland co-creators/executive producers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, currently showrunners on Fox's Accused, are those faces. They and Craig Borten are writing the series together. The original film takes place at a time science and humanity have evolved to the point where humans can direct our own evolution through genetic engineering. It's a world where through that, parents can choose their children's future before they birth them, known as the Valids. The process inherently created a new underclass, the Invalids, replacing those determined by social status or skin color. The story is about a man with a congenital heart condition who attempts to take the identity of a disabled former swimmer with perfect genes in order to fulfill his dream of traveling in space, as the company screens employees based on genes. The source says that this is the premise of the series as well, but that doesn't make sense if it's a sequel series taking place a generation later.

The series is from Sony Pictures Television, the holders of the IP as the original film was from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Distributing. Gordon and Gansa executive produce alongside Glenn Gellar, who runs their production company based within SPT, as well as Danny DeVito, who produced the 1997 movie written and directed by Andrew Niccol. As a reminder, any show in development for Showtime at this point is going to end up being for Paramount+ with Showtime, even if any of it managed to debut before the rebrand because right now there's no sign of the rebrand being aborted (though there's a history of that with Paramount-branded networks). So as far as we know, it's what's on Paramount+ (with Showtime).

Source: Deadline