Among some of the more direct news to come out of Starz’ TCA press tour panel, including an exceptionally early renewal for Michael Bay pirate drama ‘Black Sails,’ the premium cable network offered up a few updates on some of its more skeptical properties. ‘Spartacus‘ creator Steven S. DeKnight’s ‘Halo‘ meets ‘Band of Brothers’ project ‘Incursion‘ remains very much in play, though ‘Boss‘ and ‘Magic City‘ fans have a bitter pill to swallow.
On the subject of ‘Incursion,’ Starz president and CEO Chris Albrecht assured interested fans that the series remains in development, with a number of scripts for the first season completed and a great deal more pre-production work, though the budget for such a sci-fi epic has been a point of concern in moving forward.
"There’s been a lot of pre-production that’s been done. We’ve realized just how challenging this is just from a production standpoint. The description of ‘Band of Brothers meets Halo’ is really apt and comes with all the necessary command of resources that would need to be applied against it…It is in a slow pause just because we can’t go forward on a pilot that would not be affordable. We need to do a lot more work in the pilot phase."
As for Kelsey Grammer‘s ‘Boss,’ which had been canceled in its second season, Albrecht dashed fan hopes that the network would greenlight a feature wrap-up. “We tried to make that happen but Farhad [Sarfina, creator] didn’t see it in his head. So he wasn’t going to be able to come up with a way to do that and there was no way we were going to proceed without him.”
Slightly more optimistic was the fate of period crime drama ‘Magic City’ — which is also in its second season with muted ratings and lacking the prestige of a name like Kelsey Grammer. ”There are lots of surprises left in the last three episodes of Magic City and I think all will be revealed as those air,” said Albrecht. “We’re now evaluating all the options but as I said, we have a couple of little surprises in our pocket in store. I can’t reveal too much other than you’ll have the answer to your question soon.”
Well, what say you? Which of Starz’s endangered properties, past and present would you like to see the network put the most development toward?
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