Former Dawson’s Creek writers Greg Berlanti and Julie Plec are teaming up to reboot the classic U.K. series The Tomorrow People.
The pilot will be produced for the CW, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The Tomorrow People was created by Roger Price and tells the story of young people around the world who represent the next stage in human evolution who possess special powers, including the ability to teleport and communicate with one another telepathically. Together, they work to defeat the forces of evil.
The original series ran from 1973-79 on ITV with Price producing a revival in for Tetra Films and Reeves Entertainment that ran on Nickelodeon between 1992 and 1995. A third version ran between 2001 and 2007 as a series of audio plays for Big Finish Productions.
Berlanti, whose freshman drama Arrow received a full-season order at the CW earlier this fall, will executive produce alongside The Vampire Diaries co-showrunner Plec.
Phil Klemmer is writing the pilot script.
I fell in love with the original British series when I used to watch it on PBS as a kid, and was giddy when I could finally get them on DVD.
Now, if only they’d release the Nickelodeon series on DVD, this news for me could be a full-on SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
(hope Ben’s got his earplugs in, because Sam’s not the only one who can squee in that dog-whistle range)
I know I’m always wrong in thinking this, but…I thought I was the only one on the planet who’d ever heard of “The Tomorrow People”. I was certainly the only one in the neighborhood who did. Still am, probably.
Nope, I became a huge fan in the early 80s, but I don’t think I ever saw all the episodes in order until I found out that A&E produced DVD box sets and I got my hands on them out about
10-12 years ago(make that 8-10 years ago).Same thing with Sapphire & Steel; I’d watched episodes of that on PBS around the same time as Tomorrow People, but I don’t think I ever saw them in order, or even in series order until the DVD set came out.
I do believe that fewer people knew about the Nickelodeon reboot than know about the original series, though. All these years, and not one peep about that series coming out on DVD. There was another Canadian SF series on around the same time, Deepwater Black… I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one out either, and some of those kids went on to do some work in some other big SF series
I thought I had heard something ring through my head the other day…
I too am very excited about this… I haven’t seen it in YEARS so to see CW reboot it is very exciting!
However I must also agree in that I would *LOVE* to see the Nickelodeon version released, but more importantly I would love to get my hands on the original ITV series!!!
Ben, the original ITV series has been available on DVD for years… I got my sets 8-9 or so years ago. They were produced by A&E around the same time they published that set for the original “The Prisoner” and for “Sapphire & Steel”.
Hmm. Made that “had been”. Seems like Set 3 is out of print now.
I’ve added Amazon links to them in this post, and I really should add them to the Slice of SciFi Store, too.
This may well be ancient news by now … but I ran across this thread while looking for more info after seeing the trailer and such from the CW reboot.
Summer – the ’90s reboot IS available on DVD, but only in the UK. You may find this frustrating to hear, but as I understand it, the A&E release of the original series included a few episode commentaries – but the original UK DVDs have a commentary track on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE of the series! I have a multi-standard DVD player and bought all the DVDs from the UK back when they first came out, because I figured they’d never do a USA/NTSC release; just as well that I did, from what I have heard of the A&E version. (And yes, the commentaries ARE worth hearing if you were a fan of the original series.)
Well of course the 90s version is only available in the UK, sheesh!
I didn’t know about the extra commentaries for the original series, either. Why don’t we get all of the same goodies?
If you have an Amazon.com account … it also works at Amazon.co.uk. (I take no responsibility for the possible results of imparting that information. 😉 The whole issue of DVDs and DVD players that can present PAL discs on an NTSC TV has been addressed over and over on the Tomorrow People email list [http://scan-pa.com/mailman/listinfo/tpdis_scan-pa.com] though not recently. (And of course, the PAL/NTSC thing is irrelevant to watching a DVD on a computer.)
As for why A&E didn’t include all the commentaries – I can only guess that it had to do with licensing fees and they were able to save some money by not using all of them. I’m not sure which ones were used in the A&E release so if I’m telling you things you already know please excuse me – but Philip Gilbert (“Tim”) participated until ill health led him to save his energy for the then in production audio dramas from Big Finish. (The part was recast only after Mr. Gilbert died.) Once Peter Vaughan-Clarke’s character of “Stephen Jameson” was written out of the series, he took over as moderator of the commentary tracks from Nick Briggs of Big Finish. He and Nicholas Young (“John”) were the core of the commentary team, though they had quite a few guests over the course of the series, including Elizabeth Adare (“Elizabeth”), Michael Holoway (“Mike”) and Nigel Rhodes (“Andrew”). I can dig up a complete list, if you’re curious.
As you did buy the A&E release – perhaps we can work out some way to get you the commentary tracks, if you’d like to hear them. If I haven’t been clear – I own copies of all the UK dvds of the original and ’90s series, as well as all the audio dramas Big Finish put out.