Legendary Entertainment is teaming with veteran TV showrunners Emma Frost and Matthew Graham (“Life on Mars,” “Ashes to Ashes,” “The White Queen,” “The Man In The High Castle”) on a UK production company called Watford & Essex.
This collaboration already has ten projects in development with a reboot of classic 1960s Irwin Allen television series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” as its most high profile project. That project is being developed and penned by Chris Lunt and Michael Walker (“Young Wallander”).
Another high profile one is “Championess,” an adaptation of Legendary Comics’ graphic novel set in the world of C18th bareknuckle boxing in which a half-Indian young woman trains to become the best female fighter in London.
Also on the way is an adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s 1724 novel “Roxana,” the dark social comedy-drama “Hail, Satan!,” the medieval female-driven political adventure “Matilda,” the Australian family medical drama “The Alice,” the young adult supernatural drama “Heat,” the epic environmental thriller “Amazonia” which hails from Misha Glenny (“McMafia”), and an untitled contemporary thriller from Stephen Butchard (“The Last Kingdom”).
No word at present regarding when these will go into production though Frost and Graham will oversee all of them and will be heavily involved in at least several.
The news comes as streaming giant Netflix has doubled its U.K. production budget to $1 billion – producing more than fifty shows in the U.K. even with the pandemic problems. Its biggest UK productions include “The Crown,” “The Witcher” and “Sex Education”.
Source: THR
