It's good to have Robert Zemeckis back directing films with real people instead of the soulless husks of nightmare fuel that was the cast of BEOWULF and POLAR EXPRESS. His next project, however, is not a film (though he does have ALLIED with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard coming out later this year). No, like other great filmmakers before him (such as Scorsese with BOARDWALK EMPIRE and the ill-fated VINYL, and Spielberg with *cough* TERRA NOVA) he's branching out by making a new television show.
What show, you may ask? Well, hypothetical person, the show is called THE ARK, which Zemeckis is developing for NBC. It will be a modern-day retelling of Noah's Ark (natch); however, instead of an implausibly large and rickety wooden ship, the new, sexy, updated version will feature an implausibly large (and possibly rickety) space ship.
The official synopsis, according to Deadline:
centers on an engineer who, after the death of his wife, has a vision to construct a ship capable of sustaining life in space. When the build happens to coincide with the coming end of the world, the engineer realizes there may be a larger story at play.
That's all we have to go on for now. But honestly? I'm pretty excited. While I'm not religious myself, I have been known to enjoy films and TV shows that deal with religious themes. This includes the super underrated NBC series KINGS, which was a modern retelling of the story of King David starring Ian McShane in (my opinion) his best performance to date as a version of King Saul. If ARK is even half as good as KINGS we could be in for some great, most likely short-lived, television.
So any other KINGS fans out there?