"I'll be back, too... on TV"
Sanctuary creator Damian Kindler has been hired to reboot Universal Soldier, it has been announced at MIPCOM. FremantleMedia made the announcement today at the entertainment trade event, which is currently underway in Cannes.
FremantleMedia Enterprises has acquired the rights to the hit movie franchise and will produce the reboot as a global television property through its North American branch. Stargate alumnus and Sanctuary writer, executive producer and director Kindler was named as writer in the MIPCOM announcement.
“Universal Soldier is FME’s first foray into the sci-fi action genre, further diversifying our growing drama portfolio and underlining our reputation as one of the industry’s leading developers, co-producers and distributors of globally popular, high-quality scripted content,” said David Ellender, Global CEO at FremantleMedia Enterprises.
The series will be executive produced by Allen Shapiro, Chairman of TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com and formerly President and CEO of The IndieProd Company. He is joined by Craig Baumgarten, whose credits include producing Hook, the original Universal Soldier movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren and the upcoming sequel Universal Soldier: A New Generation.
“We’ve long wanted to come up with a bold new way of updating Universal Soldier,” Shapiro and Baumgarten said in a press release. “We’re thrilled to team up with FremantleMedia and are sure that the millions of fans who loved the movie will now welcome it into their living rooms.”
Damian Kindler was one of several members of Sanctuary‘s cast and crew to attend a fundraising gala for Hunter Syndrome in Vancouver recently (see our report here). He originally launched Sanctuary as a web series. It subsequently moved to TV and returns for its fourth season on SPACE in Canada and Syfy in the U.S. this coming Friday.
“I think it’s looser, I think it’s funnier; I think it takes more chances willingly,” Kindler said of the sci-fi show in a recent on-set interview for The Morton Report.
We’d like to thank our friend over at Starburst Magazine for putting us onto this story.
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