While NBC’s 2013-2014 season has its share of remakes, they’re mostly adapted from established projects. About a Boy is based on the 1998 Nick Hornby novel, which was turned into a 2002 feature. Dracula is of course based on Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel, also adapted many times before. At least Ironside was only a TV series before getting updated. But now NBC will be adapting a film that was only released a month ago, as The Hollywood Reporter reports they’re developing the indie horror thriller The Conspiracy for a TV drama, and they’ve hired feature screenwriter Scott Z. Burns to develop it. And unless you’re something of a horror buff, there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of this flick.
Written and directed by Christopher MacBride in 2012, The Conspiracy gained a bit of popularity at last year’s Fantasia Fest before eventually landing distribution and hitting VOD and theaters in August. Starring Aaron Poole and James Gilbert, the mockumentary-styled film told the story of two filmmakers whose seemingly simple interviews with an obsessive conspiracy theorist take a strange turn once their subject goes missing and they stumble upon an actual secret society. It was a decent by-the-books film that hinged largely on its pretty fantastic final act, so it’ll be interesting to see how NBC decides to stretch the story out.
As an indie film, it wasn’t necessarily weighted down with subtext, but it tied into the lifestyles of the privileged and affluent, which it looks like this story will focus on, as the project's description says it will tell the story of “a conspiracy theorist who vanishes after a man is killed at an Occupy Wall Street protest, leaving behind his sister and an FBI agent to investigate.” You just can’t have a dramatic TV series these days that doesn’t have an FBI agent involved in some way.
It’s encouraging that they’ve landed a screenwriter as impressive as Burns to lend his talents to the project. The Bourne Ultimatum was probably my favorite of the franchise, and his back-to-back Steven Soderbergh projects Contagion and Side Effects were both solid efforts. His next co-written script will be brought to screen next year for Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for Fox. Interesting, The Conspiracy’s production company Working Title, whose crew will serve as executive producers, worked with Burns over a decade ago for his writing and directorial debut, the 2006 HBO drama Pu-239.
There’s no telling when this potential series could air, but hopefully they’ll run it as a summer event series that won’t need successive seasons watering down the plot. Check out the film’s trailer below, and you can find it to rent or own at Amazon Instant.
