Snowpiercer, TNT’s upcoming hour-long tv show will adapt director Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 South Korean dystopian sci-fi film of the same name. The Snowpiercer TV show will be headlined by an Oscar winner in Jennifer Connelly, who is joined by Hamilton stage standout Daveed Diggs. Plus, Doctor Strange helmer Scott Derrickson directed the pilot (sans reshoots).
With Snowpiercer’s uniquely stylized dystopian premise, coupled with its overt political themes of class division, there will certainly be much with which to work when it comes to a prospective ongoing television series. TNT has ordered the project to series, although it always seemed likely, as they had backup scripts ready to go when they first ordered the pilot to production. Snowpiercer is a production of Tomorrow Studios via executive producers Mary Adelstein and Becky Clements and Turner’s Studio T.
Snowpiercer TV Show Cast
Jennifer Connelly (Alita: Battle Angel, A Beautiful Mind) will co-star as a character named Melanie Cavill. A member of the train’s First Class, Melanie is known as the “Voice of the Train,” heard across all cars through a PA system, making daily announcements. While, the idea of front-end First-Classers looking down upon the back-end peasants is par for the course of the established story, it seems that Melanie fields a fascination with the other half; a fascination that may just put her in the orbit of Diggs’s Layton Well during a subsequent upheaval.
Daveed Diggs (Hamilton, Blackish) will co-star as Layton Well, a prisoner living in the dregs of the train’s societal steerage in the back end. Described as a “quiet thinker” who spends his days tending to a cage filled with pet rats and sniffing a makeshift drug made from industrial waste called Chronole, Layton becomes an unlikely participant in an upheaval that could see caste clashes on the train.
Advertisement
Rowan Blanchard (The Goldbergs, Girl Meets World) plays Alexandra, described as “a self-assured 17-year-old, wise beyond her years, with mysterious connections to the history of Snowpiercer.” Blanchard’s deal will reportedly see her onboard Season 1 as a guest star with an option to become a series regular in the event of a Season 2 renewal
Rounding out the cast are Ido Goldberg, Jaylin Fletcher, Steven Ogg, Shaun Toub, Aleks Paunovic, Mickey Sumner, Alison Wright, Benjamin Haigh, Lena Hall, Aaron Glenane, Kerry O’Malley, Aaron Glenane, Fiona Vroom, Timothy V. Murphy, Happy Anderson, and Jonathan Lloyd Walker.
Snowpiercer TV Show Trailer
A new animated teaser for Snowpiercer premiered at New York Comic Con 2019. There isn’t much actual footage from the series but it’s a stylish set up to this post-apocalyptic snowy world.
The first Snowpiercer trailer premiered at SDCC 2019! Watch it below:
Snowpiercer TV Show Release Date
Snowpiercer was originally on track for an early 2019 release date. However, with this train of a series stuck at it proverbial station with pilot reshoots, it is now targeting a spring 2020 release date.
Snowpiercer TV Show Details
It’s certainly been a long process for this television adaptation. As chief creative officer of Turner Entertainment and president of TNT, Kevin Reilly, recently explained at the TCAs, via Deadline, of its behind-the-scenes-drama, which, amongst other things, saw showrunner Josh Friedman get replaced by Graeme Manson:
“Quite often when you have a change, it signals that you didn’t really buy into their vision. We had a pilot that was very promising with some creative people behind it, and in that case it was a filmmaker who hadn’t really done TV before, and mounting a series was a different order, and we got on Graeme who was a consummate professional and an incredible partner and has built off of the template that we had with the great cast.”
The Alienist director James Hawes reportedly, via Variety, came aboard to direct reshoots for the Snowpiercer TV pilot back in July 2018. Hawes’s previous work includes: Black Mirror, The Mist, Penny Dreadful, Genius, Doctor Who, and Merlin. Hawes will also serve as a co-executive producer on the show.
Hawes took over for Scott Derrickson, who directed the Snowpiercer pilot from a script written by former showrunner Josh Friedman, exited the show two weeks ago amidst creative differences.
“The 72-page Snowpiercer TV pilot script by @Josh_Friedman is the best I’ve ever read,” wrote Derrickson on Twitter. “The feature-length pilot I made from that script may be my best work. The new show runner has a radically different vision for the show. I am forgoing my option to direct the extreme reshoots.”
Graeme Manson took over as showrunner back in February 2018. Manson, who achieved acclaim as the co-creator/writer/executive-producer of BBC America’s 2013-2017 clone-centric thriller series, Orphan Black, as well the 2006-2008 Canadian comedy series, Rent-a-Goalie, took over the show in February, following Friedman’s departure in January. While Friedman was meant to stay on afterwards as showrunner, it appears that the continuing endeavor of the series has exposed a major directional divide – though it was not specified if Friedman’s differences were with TNT or other creative forces. Friedman took to Twitter
“If you’re asked to rewrite someone or take over their show it seems like good sense and good karma to reach out to that person first and a) find out what the circumstances of their departure are and b) thank them for doing the work you’ll be profiting from,” Friedman wrote on Twitter. He continued…
You should buy that person a nice meal or a bottle of alcohol if they’re up for it. Your money was earmarked for them at one time. And more than likely, what may be a good job for you was a passion project for them. Put another way: if you were to take over a show I’d originated and worked on for two years and didn’t reach out to me before taking the job you’re either an idiot, a coward, or a vichy motherfucker.
The outgoing Friedman came into his Snowpiercer tenure with television work under his belt such as NBC’s late pirate drama, Crossbones, along with other adapted series such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the halted adaptation of comic book series Locke & Key (to which Derrickson is attached).
Snowpiercer TV Show Story
2013’s Snowpiercer, directed by Bong Joon Ho, adapting the French comic book Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Jean-Marc Rochette and Benjamin Legrand, seemed like an odd foreign film detour for Marvel Cinematic Universe Captain America Chris Evans. Yet, with a limited U.S. theatrical release, the South Korean film managed to achieve respectable box office numbers with $86.8 million USD worldwide. ($4.5 million from the U.S. release.) Moreover, the breadth of its critical acclaim in the States widened by way of DVD/Blu-ray, VOD and premium cable airings.
The Snowpiercer mythology depicts a society living in the aftermath of a catastrophic climate engineering experiment that left the Earth engulfed in an ice age, relegating the remnants of humanity to live on a massive experimental locomotive – the titular Snowpiercer – powered by its own perpetual motion, rounding a circumnavigational track. Thus, TNT Snowpiercer pilot is set seven years after the events of the 2013 film, which ended in a major act of back-end sedition with the derailment of the train by way of an explosion-triggered avalanche. That, however, was only a temporary setback for the Snowpiercer. However, as its class divisions remain prevalent, seeds of a revolution are sowed and people like Daveed Diggs’s introverted prisoner Layton Well are swept in its force.
Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!