Fox Cancels Hieroglyph: Ancient Egyptian Drama From Pacific Rim Writer Won't Even Air

Looks like Doctor Fate and Ibis the Invincible will have a little less competition come the fall, when their brand of Egyptian magic pops up on NBC's Constantine.

That's because FOX has put the kibosh on its planned Ancient Egyptian drama Hieroglyph, killing the series mid-production because it wasn't shaping up the way producers had hoped.

The series, which was being written by Pacific Rim writer Travis Beacham, centered a notorious thief (Max Brown) who is plucked from prison to serve the Pharoah (Reece Ritchie), navigating palace intrigue, seductive concubines, criminal underbellies and even a few divine sorcerers, according to Deadline.

FOX picked it up straight to series so that they could avoid the common problem that action/adventure and science fiction series have where the pilot looks as polished as a feature film and subsequent episode look cheap by comparison. The idea, was that they could pick it up and spend the pilot money across multiple episodes.

Beacham, who wrote the script on spec, has been shopping it around since the 2011-2012 pilot season, when it was almost picked up -- again by FOX. With Pacific Rim's sequel in development and FOX presumably owning the rights to the script now, the project is likely dead in anything resembling its current form for the foreseeable future.