Syfy’s ‘Nightflyers’ Will Have a 10-Episode First Season, Says George R.R. Martin

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Syfy's Nightflyers Series Will Have a 10-Episode First Season

There are procrastinators, then there’s George R.R. Martin. The Song of Ice and Fire author may have stepped back from his executive producer role in HBO’s Game of Thrones to focus on finishing his long-in-the-works book The Winds of Winter, but another shiny object has caught his eye lately: Syfy’s TV adaptation of Martin’s 1980 sci-fi horror novella, Nightflyers.

To be fair, Martin has been involved with talks about the series since spring of this year, but he’s back to giving us updates on his blog about the upcoming adaptation. The newest announcement: Syfy has picked up the series for a 10-episode first season.

Martin announced on his “Not a Blog” LiveJournal that Nightflyers, created by Jeff Buhler and Daniel Cerone, is currently being developed for a 10-episode first season on Syfy. Cerone will act as showrunner while Buhler has penned the pilot for the series. Martin writes:

“NIGHTFLYERS will be shot in the Republic of Ireland, I’m told, on sound stages in Limerick… which will give them access to the same great pool of Irish and British actors that GAME OF THRONES has tapped in Belfast (and considering how many characters we’ve killed, a lot of them should be available). ((If by some miracles I actually complete enough of my other projects to create some free time, I’ve love to go over there and kill two birds with one flight by visiting both the GOT and NIGHTFLYERS sets… but that remains a long shot, given my current word load)). If all goes according to schedule, the series should debut this summer, in late July. It will be broadcast on SyFy in the USA, and on Netflix around the world.”
This is the second update that Martin has provided us with Nightflyers after he was first alerted to the development of a series in May of this year. The 1980 novella was a “haunted starship” story, set in Martin’s Thousand Worlds universe, which he later expanded as a collection of short stories in 1985. Nightflyers was first adapted as a 1987 feature film directed by Robert Collector, which followed a group of scientists on board a spaceship who are terrorized by the ship’s sentient computer. Check out the trailer, which is as 1980s sci-fi as you can get





Martin wrote on his blog that he met with Buhler and Cerone, who showed him the pilot script and concept art of the Nightflyer space ship, seen above. Though surprised by the news that Syfy acquired the TV rights to the old movie deal of Nightflyers, Martin says he was heartened by Buhler and Cerone’s pilot, which “departs considerably” from the plot of Martin’s novella:

“Honestly, at first I was baffled as to how they hoped to get a series out of my story, since at the end of the novella (and the film) pretty much everyone is dead (it was a horror story, after all). But in May, UCP got me a copy of Jeff Buhler’s script, and I saw how he’d dealt with that. It was a good read, and yes, I came away with a better idea of where they’d find a few seasons.”
I’m slightly comforted by Martin’s assurances that he won’t take an active part in the Nightflyers series, but I’ve started to lose hope at being able to read The Winds of Winter sometime in this decade. While I’m sure Syfy will have a wonderful new twist on the horror-camp of Nightflyers, I just want Martin to finish his Song of Ice and Fire series soon. And maybe update from LiveJournal.
 

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The first full trailer for this show is giving me total EVENT HORIZON vibes.

(Don't know why Syfy are being dikks and make you have to watch this on Youtube:hmm:)
 
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TheNatureBoy

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Solid first episode, shyt is already going sideways. Didn't see much that was original, but the psychic element is intriguing.

Captain watching everybody on the ship :shaq:
 

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#We Are The Flash #DOOMSET #LukeCageSet #NEWLWO
I was wondering was y’all gonna create a thread for this.

Yes this was a solid ep..... a lot of “what the fukk is going on” shyt about it

The captain a straight up voyeur but I’m thinking something may not be right with him that’s gonna reveal itself soon.

Can’t wait for the next ep

Martha
 

daemonova

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this and Mars should keep me filled until Discovery comes back
 

KalKal

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No Whammies!!
My impression of the pilot:
"It was all a dream:ohhh:....OR WAS IT??:demonic:"

Could get tedious if we're left constantly trying to figure out what events are real and what events are in somebody's mind.

I see a lot of comparisons to Event Horizon, but I would say it also reminded me of "Sphere". That had a theme of alien powers causing mental imagery to manifest itself in the real world.
 

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The cameras reminded me of HAL 9000. I was wondering if he might be an AI.


Looks like GRRM and company hit us with the plot twist this ep.:ohhh:


Cool idea with the breh hologram projecting all over the place.
 

KalKal

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No Whammies!!
Looks like GRRM and company hit us with the plot twist this ep.:ohhh:


Cool idea with the breh hologram projecting all over the place.

I was expecting AI, but I WASN'T expecting "Black Mirror" cookies.
This was this first time this show did something that didn't feel like a direct rip off of Event Horizon, or Sphere, or 2001, or Alien, or Interstellar, or any number of shows about a lonely crew on board a large creepy spaceship to me.
 

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Caught up on the last few episodes.

A lot of things that have you going :ohhh:, hopefully we get more answers.

Like why a certain entity is acting :francis:all the time.

Thale is probably the most interesting character to me so far.
 
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