EXCLUSIVE: Emmy-nominated The Last of Us director Peter Hoar has launched a production outfit and is working on a reboot of cult British sci-fi classic Blake’s 7.
Hoar has opened “genre-based” indie Multitude Productions with A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder exec Matthew Bouch and West End producer Jason Haigh-Ellery. The trio have snapped up a wealth of IP including Blake’s 7, which last aired on the BBC 45 years ago.
Hoar, who directed the critically-acclaimed “Long, Long Time” ep of HBO’s The Last of Us, plans to direct the Blake’s 7 reboot, which will go out to buyers soon. Bouch would “love it to go to the BBC” and will likely seek co-pro funding from the American streamers and European players like RTL.
Created by Terry Nation, the man credited with inventing the Daleks, Blake’s 7 aired for four seasons on the BBC from 1978 to 1981. The show, which exhibited numerous tropes of the traditional space opera, followed the exploits of political dissident Roj Blake (Gareth Thomas), who leads a small group of rebels against the forces of the totalitarian Terran Federation that rules the Earth and many colonized planets. There have been several reboot attempts down the decades but none have caught fire. Multitude struck the deal with Nation’s estate and casting and writing conversations will commence in due course.
With genre shows like Doctor Who stuck in something of a rut and less money around in high-end scripted, Hoar and Bouch believe that now is the time to set up shop. They have been joined at Multitude by exec producer Lizzie Worsdell, whose credits include Amrita Acharia’s indie pic The Carer.
“The Blake’s 7 story is legendary because they were given a ‘softly softly’ slot that was intended for police drama with a budget intended for one big set and a few location shoots,” said double-BAFTA winner Hoar, whose credits include It’s a Sin and Umbrella Academy. “At the time it felt like it meant something. Those shows got into my veins. I could tell they didn’t have money but I was able to compartmentalize and enjoy the ride knowing that the sets wobbled.”
Hoar compares Blake’s 7 to Disney+ hit Andor, which he thinks is a success not because of its circa-$25M per hour budget but “because of the integrity, wit and sophistication.”
He said Doctor Who, which Disney+ has just exited after only two seasons of one of the biggest co-pro deals of the decade, is a cautionary tale.
“I don’t think anybody would doubt the skills at the front line of that show but something went wrong,” he added. “I think there were lots of areas you could point fingers at but ultimately it wasn’t a better show with more money. And that’s a good thing, because we haven’t got the money anymore, nobody has.”
Multitude Productions: genre-based British IP
Peter Hoar (left) and Matthew Bouch
This, according to Bouch, will be Multitude Productions’ raison d’être.
Bouch said: “We’re driven by our passions but also seeing that there is a gap in the market in the UK – particularly with the well-publicized dropping off of Doctor Who – for genre-based British IP.
“We look back at when we were young with a degree of nostalgia but also thinking about the 70s and 80s as we were growing up and the amount of genre material that was available, whether it was Blake’s 7 or the Narnia adaptation. We are looking to the international market and seeing if there is a way of dovetailing that British low-budget sensibility with international markets. We know in the U.S. there’s a big contraction and we all need to think about finding ways to make things more economical.”
With this in mind, Multitude is working on a TV series version of Luke Rhinehart’s The Search for the Dice Man, the sequel to the cult classic Dice Man novel for which Paramount owns the rights. An A-list star is attached, Bouch said, with Danny Wallace (Yes Man) aboard to write and Tim Kirkby (Fleabag) directing.
The indie has also optioned Patrick Carman’s Skeleton Creek book series, which is being adapted by Phillip Morgan and was described by Hoar as a “British Stranger Things crossed with Skins.”
The team is also working on an adaptation of a well-known video game and a sci-fi series, the latter in development with UK broadcaster ITV, although no more details were disclosed on those. Hoar and Bouch are keen to find new sources of funding and are developing a version of Rikako Akiyoshi’s The Dark Maidens Japanese novel, which is being part funded by the Singaporean government, along with a crime series, Scammers, made with fraudster-turned-content-maker Tony Sales and his Underworld TV outfit.
Hoar and Bouch, who have worked with Britain’s biggest showrunners including Russell T. Davies and Jack Thorne, are championing a multi-writer model to get scribes back to work.
“We’ve never really had a showrunner model in the UK and I think it is full of problems because it doesn’t necessarily speak to that collaborative nature,” added Bouch. “Russell [T. Davies] is Russell but I think those people are relatively few and far between.”
Taking this “collaborative” approach, Bouch is confident that Multitude’s model is the right one to create success in a tricky market that has seen lots of traditional drama companies shut up shop.
“We’re very aware that it feels counterintuitive to launch something at this point but equally we feel there is a gap in the market in terms of what we are doing,” he added. “Our expertise straddles both international and British lower budget material. Obviously the proof will be in the pudding.”
