Gary Ruddell / Bantam Spectra / Doubleday
According to a press release from NBC-owned Syfy, the cable channel announced it plans to produce an “event series” (read: miniseries) based on Dan Simmons’ 1989 sci-fi novel. Hyperion.
Long considered a tentpole of modern science fiction, Hyperion starts out as a sci-fi version The Canterbury Stories, featuring a main cast of seven characters brought together on a pilgrimage to the home of an unfathomable killing machine called ‘The Shrike’. The book is the first in a standalone series, followed by the direct sequel Fall of Hyperion, and two other books set hundreds of years later, Endymion And Rise of Endymion. The series is collectively referred to as “The Hyperion Cantos”.
“On the eve of Armageddon, wage war with the entire galaxy, Hyperion is the story of seven pilgrims who set out on a journey to seek the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. his hands.”
The operation is produced by American snipers Bradley Cooper, who wrote a spec script for the project in 2011, according to Screenrant. In addition to Cooper as executive producers, Graham King (Argo, The Departed) and Todd Phillips (The hangover). Boardwalk Empire writer Itamar Moses will write the script.
The press release doesn’t specifically state how much of the tetralogy will make it to the series. Only the first book is named, but the first book ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, so it seems logical that the miniseries will tell the largely self-contained story that spans the first two books, Hyperion And Fall of Hyperion. Even if only those two books are featured, the production promises to be complex: the story is set in the distant future and includes viewpoints and characters from more than a dozen different worlds. Most of the first book is spent in flashbacks as each of the seven pilgrims tells his or her story, while the second book focuses on a tripartite war that spans the galaxy and dimensions. Heavily woven into the series are allusions to the works of poet John Keats, including the eponymous Keats poem ‘Hyperion’.
No firm production date has been set and no cast has been signed yet, but we’ll watch it with interest.