Sci-Fi Storm

The Walking Dead‘s Robert Kirkman and his Skybound Entertainment has optioned the rights to Frederik Pohl’s 1977 novel [asin=0345475836]Gateway[/asin] for development as a television series.

Gateway is about humanity’s discovery of a space station (dubbed Gateway by the humans) in a hollowed out asteroid, left behind a mysterious long-vanished alien civilization called the Heechee, and food miner Robinette Stetley Broadhead, who leaves Earth after winning the lottery to seek out a better life. It is the first novel in the Heechee saga, comprised of 6 books, and it won the 1977 Nebula and 1978 Hugo and Locus awards, as well as the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Gateway has passed through several hands recently. In 2014, Entertainment One Television and De Laurentiis Co. had optioned the novel for television, and then a year later Syfy announced that it had placed the novel on its own development slate, with Entertainment One Television and Universal Cable Productions teaming up, and David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) and Josh Pate (Falling Skies) executive producing.

While it isn’t an order for new episodes, Futurama fans can still rejoice! And just maybe down the road…SYFY today announced that it has acquired the hit animated series Futurama from Twentieth Television in a multi-year, non-exclusive deal that includes all 140 HD episodes of the series. Futurama will make its SYFY debut in a special weekend stunt beginning Saturday, November 11, with the series airing regularly in primetime on Mondays and Tuesdays from 8PM-2AM ET/PT and on Saturday mornings from 8-11AM ET/PT.

The Futurama acquisition comes as SYFY continues to aggressively expand its genre programming following its summer 2017 brand reboot. Futurama – the first fully animated series in SYFY’s rebooted lineup – will join a growing roster of ambitious scripted and unscripted originals and high profile acquired series and movies that reflect the rich depth of the genre.

“We’re continuing to invest heavily to give our passionate fans the very best in genre programming, and I can think of no better addition to SYFY’s lineup than one of my personal favorites, Futurama,” said Chris McCumber, President, Entertainment Networks (USA and SYFY) for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment.

First airing on FOX from 1999-2003, Futurama was brought back in 2007 with four direct-to-DVD movies that subsequently aired as 30-minute episodes on Comedy Central. Based on their success, Comedy Central ordered new seasons of the series which debuted in June 2010. Over the course of its storied run, Futurama has earned six Emmy Awards®–including two for Outstanding Animated Program, seven Annie Awards, two Environmental Media Awards and two Writers Guild of America Awards.

Futurama, created by Matt Groening, developed by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, is produced by The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Television.

In addition to current acclaimed series like The Expanse, The Magicians and Channel Zero, upcoming SYFY originals include the December 6 premiere of Happy!, an out-there graphic novel adaptation starring Christopher Meloni and featuring the voice of Patton Oswalt as the animated title character – and the highly anticipated Superman prequel Krypton (2018). SYFY is also currently developing several notable properties, including pilot orders for an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s space opera novella Nightflyers and a reboot of the 1990 cult classic Tremors.