Prisoner remake abandoned

By John Freeman on September 4, 2007

(with thanks to Lew Stringer for the link): A top Sky boss has admitted the much-touted The Prisoner remake, rumoured at one time to have starred Christopher Eccleston, has been dropped.

In a recent interview for news site Digital Spy, Richard Woolfe, head of Sky One and offshoots Sky Two and Three, revealed the project had been abandoned.

“The Prisoner is not happening,” he explained. “It’s a very quintessentially British drama and there were too many creative differences trying to share it with an American partner. I didn’t want to be responsible for taking something that is quintessentially British and adapting it in a way that I didn’t feel was reflective of the way people would remember it and the way people would want it to be. So we called time on that.”

Granada International announced last December that it had joined up with US movie network AMC to co-produce a new version of The Prisoner for Sky One, based on the cult 1960s show which starred Patrick McGoohan.

It was expected to go into production in the spring and premiere in 2008, based on scripts written by Bill Gallagher, creator and writer of Conviction and Clocking Off.

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.