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Ridley Scott to Direct TNT Sci-Fi Series Raised by Wolves
Ridley Scott is tackling yet another project about androids, albeit this time in the form of a TV series titled Raised by Wolves. The show was written and created by Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners, Papillon) and revolves around a pair of androids who are tasked with caring for human children on a recently-colonized planet where the human residents are becoming increasingly divided over their religious beliefs and, in turn, general philosophical outlooks.
As prolific as Scott is as a filmmaker (having nearly averaged a movie a year this century alone), he's become even more prolific as a television producer over the past decade. Ongoing genre shows like AMC's historical horror drama The Terror and Amazon's dystopian alternate reality series The Man in the High Castle count Scott among their executive producers, as do recent (not to mentioned, generally dark and macabre) series like FX's historical drama Taboo and CBS' sci-fi political satire BrainDead. Even so, Scott hasn't actually helmed an episode of TV since he directed Showtime's never-aired The Vatican pilot in 2013.
In fact, Scott hasn't directed an episode of TV that made it to the actual airwaves since the late 1960s. That's about to change, though, now that TNT has ordered Raised by Wolves direct-to-series, with Scott set to helm some as-yet unspecified number of episodes. The filmmaker released an official statement as part of TNT's announcement, explaining what it was about Guzikowski's series that attracted him in the first place:
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"I'm always searching for new frontiers in the sci-fi genre and have found a true original in Raised by Wolves - a wholly distinct and imaginative world, full of characters struggling with existential questions: What makes us human? What constitutes a family? And what if we could start over again and erase the mess we’ve made of our planet? Would we survive? Would we do better? Given TNT's impressive run of bold, quality programming, this feels like exactly the right home for this kind of ambitious television."
As indicated earlier, the combination of androids and existential questions about human nature makes Raised by Wolves a natural fit for the mind behind the Alien and Blade Runner franchises. Scott has only become increasingly obsessed with telling stories about artificially intelligent beings in recent years, having even made a pair of Alien prequel films (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant) that focus as much on Michael Fassbender's AI robot David as the series' iconic Xenomorph. With the Alien franchise on ice at the moment following Covenant's disappointing box office run, Raised by Wolves will allow Scott to further scratch that itch.
Guzikowski's storytelling sensibilities likewise make him a natural collaborator for Scott. The former has shown a vested interest in exploring stories about the dark side of human nature with his screenplays for crime dramas like Contraband and Prisoners, as well as this summer's prison escape memoir Papillon and the Jason Momoa-led crime show The Red Road. With Guzikowski writing and Scott calling the shots, Raised by Wolves will undoubtedly be a dark slice of sci-fi TV, but may also prove to be a real standout in the increasingly crowded playing field of prestige genre television.
