Michael Bay And TNT Get Into The Global Pandemic Act With The Last Ship

Date: May 17, 2012 | Author: Brent McKnight | Category: Sci-Fi

michael-bay You can tell a lot about the collective psyche of the populace by the prevalent trends in science fiction. And pandemics are hot right now. The Walking Dead, Contagion, the potential of a sweeping global disease is on people’s minds at the moment. With all of this popular success (Josh wrote a great piece about the state of sci-fi earlier today) TNT and Michael Bay are forming some sort of super group and getting in on the act, developing a new series The Last Ship.

The show will follow the crew of a ship that is at sea when the globe is ravaged by disease. They have to soldier on, so to speak, and find a new place to settle and start a colony.

Here’s what the TNT press release says about The Last Ship:

In this exciting action/adventure project based on the popular novel by William Brinkley, the crew of a naval destroyer is forced to confront the reality of a new existence when a pandemic decimates most of the earth’s population. Michael Bay (Transformers) intends to direct the pilot if it is green lit. Executive Producers: Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form, Hank Steinberg (showrunner and writer) and Steve Kane (writer). Production Company: Platinum Dunes.

It looks like the show will change a few things from source, to update the story to go with the flow of modern times. Brinkley’s book first appeared in 1989, and the cataclysmic event was a brief, full-scale nuclear war, not a worldwide epidemic. How times have changed.

I know a lot of people wish a plague of boils upon Michael Bay. While much of the ire is well earned (primarily for enabling a string of unnecessary horror remakes), I have a special place in my heart for the man and his work. I can’t stand the Transformers movies, but Armageddon incredible (and always on TV), Pearl Harbor is the funniest movie I’ve ever seen (not kidding), and Bad Boys II is the best action movie produced in my lifetime (also not a joke). Especially if he does wind up directing the pilot, it’ll be curious to see how Bay’s epic sense of scale and lightning fast editing style translates to the small screen. I’ll give The Last Ship a shot, and I’m curious what you all think.

Comments

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=39601847 Jesse Garza

Simpsons already did that plot this season.
http://twitter.com/MaLipps Lipps

eh….Armegeddon is a great hungover sunday movie…..but calling it “incredible” i think is like that doctor calling the baby ‘breathtaking’ in seinfeld.
http://twitter.com/Enoti905 Neta Bozman

I loved the book, and post-apocalyptic stories in general, but I’m not a fan of the Transformers so I have mixed feelings about this. I’ll just hope for the best but the odds of having a good SF show on TV are not good…
JustinHall1

I’m thinking we need to skip the ideas of a pandemic and go to what happens if a pandemic doesn’t take us out. Simple math should show that with the population increasing at the rate it is it won’t be long before the planet is “standing room only”. I think a show that focuses on the idea of government enforced population control could have interesting implications…just a thought. As to the pandemic thing….getting old. Zombies were fun but it’s overdone. And ever since those first few syfy (or whatever it was called back then I can’t keep up with their various spellings of the same thing) movies where some monkey spreads ebola to the entire world and some actor like tommy lee jones swoops in and the CDC saves the world…it’s gotten boring. (Note: no attempt at factual accuracy was made there, gross generalizations…please don’t waste a comment clarifying what actor or organization saves the world, my point is that you get the point) Heck, they even made a reality show about this somewhere in Louisiana I think.
- http://www.facebook.com/briancmckinley Brian C McKinley
  
  I agree with your point, we should be focusing the world’s scientific energy on figuring out space flight/colonization.
Mike

Al thought I am not the biggest Bay fan (actually I have only liked 2 Bay movies, Armageddon & The Rock) This sounds pretty cool so likie you I will give it a shot and yes I completely dispise him for those awful horror remakes!
- JustinHall1
  
  Like: The Rock was a fun movie.

Giant Freakin Robot