Thursday, May 04, 2006

David Eick discusses Caprica

In the part 3 interview with David Eick by iF Magazine, the executive producer of Battlestar Galactica shares some compelling information regarding the spinoff series. Here are the parts that pertain directly to the SCIFI original series titled Caprica:

iF: When do you anticipate going into production on the new CAPRICA series?

EICK: We would need a green light first. But I would imagine, if that happens, then we would be shooting in August. Ron and I started talking about a prequel series right around the time we were breaking the second season. When I did HERCULES with the folks at Renaissance Pictures we had the spin-off XENA ready to accompany the second season of that show. I told Ron since we were getting ready to head into our second season, that so far he and I hadn't had a conversation about a spin-off let alone one ready to go to a company with. We realized if we were going to do a spin-off it would have to come from some place organic, it couldn't just be because we wanted to do one.

iF: What was the genesis for CAPRICA?

EICK: We got to talking about the events that took place before the attack and how you might be able to spin a story or a style of storytelling that would be different from GALACTICA. We wanted something much more romantic, and much more of a soap that dealt with a corporation and the man in charge of that corporation who in a very innocent and idealized way propagated the artificial intelligence technology that would later become [unbeknownst to him and those involved in the series] the Cylons. That was about as far as we got, and we continued along on our merry way doing season two. We finished that and started to work on season three. Along the same time we were introduced by the studio to a gentlemen named Remi Aubuchon, who had a pitch that struck them as having a lot of similarities to the Cylon mythos. Ron and I thought, "well we were never able to make time to pursue that idea we had a year ago. . . maybe this is an opportunity to meld what this guy has with what we had. He could write it and we could develop it with him," and so that's what we did. We were right; his idea was very similar to what we had been talking about. We took some of what we had and some of what he had and he's going to start writing next week.

iF : Is CAPRICA going to air on the SCI FI Channel?

EICK: We put our minds together, put the ideas together, and spruced up a pitch. Then we went into the SCI FI Channel and pitched it to them, they were very enthusiastic and it was very well received. They said, 'we'll buy it. . . go write it' so that is what we are doing.


That was far more information than I was expecting out of the iF magazine interview! Eick also reveals that the concept for the spinoff has been floating around for some time now. Most exciting!

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Posted by Smitty at 4:31 PM - 0 comments