George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards Is Headed To Television

The George R.R. Martin edited shared superhero universe of Wild Cards is headed to television. The Game of Thrones creator revealed on his blog that Universal Cable Productions had acquired the rights for immediate development.

“Universal Cable Productions (UCP) has acquired the rights to adapt our long-running Wild Cards series of anthologies and mosaic novels for television,” Martin writes. “Development will begin immediately on what we hope will be the first of several interlocking series.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass, Martin’s assistant editor on Wild Cards and a frequent contributor to the universe, is attached as executive producer on the project. Snodgrass’s television work includes the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Measure of a Man,” Reasonable Doubts, The Profiler, and Star Command. Gregory Noveck, Slow Learner, and SyFy films are also producing.

Universal Cable Productions is the studio behind the hit drama Mr. Robot. They also produce Colony, Suits, Royal Pains, Syfy’s The Magicians, 12 Monkeys, and Killjoys, and previously handled the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

The Wild Cards universe is an alternate version of our own world. The timeline diverged in 1946 when an alien virus was released into Earth’s atmosphere over Manhattan. Individuals who contracted the “Wild Card” virus were affected differently. “Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same,” Martin writes.

The Wild Cards series of anthologies, novels, and mosaic novels enlists a group of genre writers, known as the Wild Cards Trust, to tell stories of those lucky “aces.” The Trust includes Martin and Snodgrass, X-Men legend Chris Claremont, Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell, the legendary, late fantasy author Roger Zelazny, and several more.

Martin makes clear that he is not working on the adaptation himself, as his own television development deal makes him exclusive to HBO, and he is quite busy working on The Winds of Winter. He also isn’t sure exactly what shape the series will take but expresses great confidence in Snodgrass and the rest of the Wild Cards team.

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