TV Series That Might Have Been: The Trigan Empire

By John Freeman on March 17, 2020 • ( 1 )

The Trigan Empire TV Concept Art by Chris Weston

This week sees the release of The Trigan Empire Volume One from Rebellion under their Treasury of British Comics imprint – a comic that we’ve just learnt almost became a TV series.

Artist Chris Weston, who trained under Trigan Empire‘s co-creator Don Lawrence, has revealed some some of the concept art he did a few years ago for a proposed Trigan TV show, the first episode to be directed by the award-winning Sam Yates, based on the long-running comic strip written by Mike Butterworth, which ran in Ranger and Look and Learn and is still hugely popular in Europe.

“It was great fun and had a lovingly faithful script by Samuel Pinney“, Chris teased on Twitter yesterday.

“We wrote an entire first season,” says screenwriter and journalist Samuel, who was Special Projects Digital Editor at Time Inc UK, the company that previously owned Trigan Empire before Rebellion bought their comic properties.

His numerous credits include screenwriter for The Viking Raid VR Experience for The Ridley Scott Creative Group / Viking Planet and articles for The Times, The Telegraph, NME, Shortlist, The Guardian, Private Eye and more.

“We had directors attached,” Samuel also teased in Twitter, “and the producer who was involved would make nerds faint with joy. I still hold out a glimmer of hope that it might happen.”

I think you’ll agree Chris’s designs look utterly stunning. We’re assuming this was entirely separate to the abandoned Richard Fleischer movie project we’ve previously featured here.

The proposed TV series was a separate, entirely new project, Samuel told downthetubes.

”We had the entire first season written and the next two in outline. [The] first season (10 sixty minute episodes) was loosely based on ‘The Reign of Thara’, but absolutely littered with references to other classic storylines.”

Let’s hope Rebellion could now make this happen…

• The Rise and Fall of The Trigan Empire Volume One is on sale this week

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “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.