Before his “The Invisible Man” drew raves, Australian filmmaker Leigh Whannell was getting similarly strong reviews for the lesser-seen 2018 film “Upgrade,” a Verhoeven-era throwback action film that has its share of loyal fans.
Last May came word that the film’s producer Jason Blum was working on a TV series spin-off of the property which he remains a firm fan of and which he regrets not getting the attention level it deserved.
Speaking with Collider for “Welcome to the Blumhouse” press and ahead of the release of “Halloween Kills” on Friday, he offered an update on how the “Upgrade” series version is going and says they’re not going forward with it unless the scripts are good enough they can get a straight-to-series order:
“Upgrade should have been a wide release. I was pissed about that. We’re working on a TV show. So working on the scripts. This first round, didn’t come out. I didn’t get the response I wanted to get. I don’t want to be in development. I want an order. We’re working on the scripts again, so that we can get an order. And I don’t want to develop it.”
Logan Marshall-Green starred in the original film as a man paralyzed in an attack that killed his wife. Her boss offers the man an experimental microchip implant allowing him to walk again, but the chip’s AI (named STEM) grows more sentient and puppeteers his body on a revenge quest.
Blum has previously said the series picks up a few years after the events of the film and broadens the universe with an evolved version of STEM and a new host. Whannell would serve as executive producer alongside Tim Walsh (“Shooter”) as showrunner.
