In a competitive situation, Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res and Bron Studios have now acquired the rights to David Cronenberg’s 1981 sci-fi thriller, Scanners and develop it as a TV series. Ellenberg and Bron got the rights in a bidding war, with many film studios including Lionsgate, Paramount, and Skydance.
Scanners is about an underground network of people born with telekinetic powers and living in a society that is hunted down by the forces that created them. Ellenberg and Bron want to develop the TV series adaptation with a high-end filmmaker and showrunner before shopping it to the premium services.
Ellenberg will executive produce with Bron’s Aaron L. Gilbert and Danielle Reardon, Clark Peterson and Pierre David.Serving as executive producers are Rene Malo and Fanny-Laure Malo.
For about a decade, rights were held by The Weinstein Co.’s Dimension Films which had tried developing it as a movie and a TV series.
Ellenberg has the hot Untitled Morning Show Project in a bidding situation as well. Written by Jay Carson, it stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. Ellenberg is developing with Lars Blomgren of Filmlance the event series Scenes from a Marriage, based on Ingmar Bergman’s look at a marriage in crisis.
On the feature side, Ellenberg is producing the character-based sci-fi drama Untitled Karl Gajdusek Project for 20th Century Fox.
Ellenberg launched Media Res in June with the aim of producing premium, television projects similar to the series he shepherded in the early stages including Westworld, The Leftovers, and The Young Pope.
Negotiating the deal on behalf of Bron, producer and financier and Media Res were AnjayNagpal and David Davoli, while Wayne Alexander and WME represented their rights, Peterson and David.
Here is the trailer for Scanners, which starred Jennifer O’Neill, Michael Ironside, Steven Lack and Patrick McGoohan:
