FX's pilot for a series based on the comic book "Powers" is in limbo. The cable channel hasn't picked up the show to series, but it's not dead in the water either.
The pilot, based on Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming's comic, shot last summer, and at the time FX president and general manager John Landgraf was fairly positive about the early footage he had seen. He sounded a little less enthused Sunday (Jan. 15) at the TV critics' press tour.
He says the pilot hasn't been picked up, but writer Charles Eglee ("The Shield," "Dexter") has done extensive rewrites on the script. FX is considering whether to go ahead with reshooting scenes based on Eglee's new script.
Landgraf calls the project, which stars Jason Patric as a homicide detective/former superhero and Lucy Punch as his new partner, "as difficult an adaptation as I've ever worked on."
The goal with "Powers," he says is to make a serious drama with superhero elements, and that's not something he's ever really seen before.
"If you think about a 10 o'clock drama, a 'Sopranos'-esque drama ... there's never been either a theatrical feature film or a television series that's taken the superhero genre into that type of tonality," Landgraf says. "It's never been done, and it's just really a struggle."
(You could argue that movies like "The Dark Knight" had as serious a tone as what Landgraf is talking about, but he's pretty much correct on the TV front.)
He does think it can be done, citing what "Game of Thrones" has done with fantasy as an example. "It's just proving really difficult," he says.
