Peter Fonda Joins Ridley Scott’s AMC Pilot Galyntine
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With The Walking Dead, AMC has provided half of the one-two punch that is fueling renewed science fiction and fantasy show development across the TV landscape (the other half is HBO’s Game of Thrones). The runaway success of that program has encouraged both AMC and other networks to take chances on geek-trending concepts that previously would have seemed out of place on the network that gave us Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Projects like Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic pilot Galyntine, which just landed a huge “get,” adding Academy Award-nominated actor Peter Fonda as a series regular.
Galyntine is set in the aftermath of a technological cataclysm of some sort, which has led to society willfully embracing a tech-free way of life. It sounds a bit like the just-canceled Revolution, but without the mystery of why everybody tossed their mobile phones in the bin. And hopefully way less frustrating and potential wasting. Fonda will be playing Crawford, the owner of a handyman shop and a “grizzled, ultratraditionalist hard-ass with a sadistic streak and a simmering resentment” about no longer being the guy in charge among his particular group. So maybe a more interesting version of The Walking Dead’s Governor?
Galyntine was created and written by Jason Cahill, a co-executive producer on AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire, which premieres tomorrow night, and who also worked on Fringe and the underrated Surface back in the day. Ridley Scott is aboard as an executive producer, alongside Cahill and Walking Dead makeup master Greg Nicotero.
Galyntine isn’t AMC’s only recent foray deeper into genre territory. They just recently passed on an intriguing pilot called Line of Sight, which would have starred Walking Dead’s David Morrissey as a National Transportation Safety Board investigator who survives a mysterious plane crash, then commits himself to digging deeper into that mystery. It was created by Blake Masters, the dude behind Brotherhood, a great Showtime crime drama that nobody seems to remember.
Still alive, so far as we know, is the even more promising Ballistic City, from Pacific Rim co-writer Travis Beacham and Oblivion director Joseph Kosinski. Described as “Blade Runner meets Battlestar Galactica,” Ballistic City is a noir-ish sci-fi crime drama set in a “city” aboard a traveling spaceship, and involving a former cop becoming embroiled in the world of organized crime. It’s one of those shows I’m constantly hoping to hear good news about, especially since Beacham’s got his new show Hieroglyph hitting Fox in the Fall, and I’m hoping that doesn’t mean Ballistic City is dead.
We’ll keep you posted with more Galyntine news when we hear it.
Header image courtesy of High Top Releasing
