OMG NEW POST!

I found this interiew on tv.com, its an interview with Adrian Hodges about Survivors, but there's also this bit on Primeval!


BE: Speaking of "Primeval," I wanted to ask you a few questions about that series as well.

AH: Sure!

BE: I was actually here when you guys kickstarted the series at the TCA tour.

AH: Two years ago, yeah.

BE: It's a great concept and great use of special effects.

AH: Oh, thank you.

BE: Now if I remember correctly…and I may not…the person who helped to design the show's creatures actually based them in some way on scientific fact or, at least, scientific speculation.

AH: Well, what happened was…Tim (Haines) is really a scientist, anyway. That's his background. He comes from a science background and a journalism background. Before he was a drama guy, he was a documentary guy, so the expertise that he brings to the show, apart from his storytelling ability, is in that area. And because he did "Walking with Dinosaurs," he really made himself an expert in the special effects area. I think Tim is probably ahead of anybody in England in terms of appreciation of what special effects and CGI can do. I mean, he knows about animatronics, too, but those are slightly out of fashion because of cost, and CGI is obviously in, and Tim is brilliant with CGI. I'll be the first to admit that that's his thing…and it's not mine! (Laughs) So we…yeah, obviously, we kind of muck about with the creatures and things, but their starting premise is always more or less true.

BE: To talk again about the whole nobody-is-safe thing, man, Douglas Henshall's departure from the series…? Talk about startling!

AH: Yeah, well, it was meant to be! (Laughs) One of the things that can happen with a show like "Primeval" is that, because you're dancing with death every week and being saved by the skin of your teeth, the audience begins to get lazy about thinking that there's no real danger, that it won't actually be real. And it was particularly kind of shocking to me that he would die at the end of a gun, because…it's not a dinosaur in the end, it's his crazy ex-wife with a gun. And that worked. That was always the ending I imagined for him. I always knew that Helen would be the end of him. It was not intended to be so early in that season, however, but unfortunately that was how it worked out with Douglas, because he wanted to go on and do different things, so we brought it in early in the series.

BE: How thrilled was he about his demise?

AH: He was great about it. He wanted the character to die. He didn't want to just step through the anomaly and maybe reappear one day. He wanted it, so he was fully behind it and was okay with that. When he told us that he was going to move on, it was a big shock, because I thought that he was going to do the whole series, and it was very late in the day and we'd done a lot of storylining at that point, so we had to really reconsider everything pretty sharpish. But he was cool, and I said, "Look, you know, I think Cutter's going to have to die, because it's better from a storytelling point of view. I've got to give him that, because I can use that legacy in the drama for the rest of the series." And he was absolutely on the side of that. He was cool about it.

BE: So what's the status of the series? Is there going to be another series? And is there going to be a movie? Because I know there's been talk about it for awhile.

AH: I hope there'll be both! There will be another series, yeah. There's going to be 13 more episodes, which we start shooting in March, so I'm right in the middle of that when I get home. We'll start…I imagine they'll start transmitting in the UK early next year, so it's probably right about the same in America. It's a longer gap than I would've wanted, but unfortunately there was a problem with ITV, and it took us awhile to get it sorted out. The film, I'm afraid, is just endless. It's… (Sighs) Man, you know, my whole life is ticking by during these negotiations! (Laughs) There is still every intention of doing it, but we are still not completely finished with the deal with Warner Brothers, and the guy who's writing it…oh, now it's gone out of my head for a second, but…oh, Akiva Goldsman! He's absolutely cool, he wants to do it, he's very, very keen. We talk to him on a fairly regular basis. But it has been a living nightmare trying to get a deal sorted out. But I think we're nearly there.

BE: When you do that, is that going to be moving on from the series, or will it be a different tale altogether?

AH: Yeah, it will be a different tale, but that's going to be an interesting question, because what we have to do with Akiva when the deal is finally signed is sort out the parameters of where he can go with it and where we can't let him go because it would ruin the franchise. So, clearly, we don't expect him to follow the storyline of the TV show particularly, but we do expect him to make it possible for us to come back to the TV show intact. He can't do something with the big-screen version that would make ours completely wrong, you know? So we have a three-month option with him at the outset whereby he comes to us with his story ideas, and Tim and I have the right to say "no" if that doesn't fit with what we want to do with the show. I mean, I hope we won't have to say "no," but Akiva understands that, and he's known that from the beginning, so it would be pretty silly if he came and said, "Oh, we're going to do it completely differently."

Well there you go, if you lurve survivors then you may want to check out the interview here.