What we have here is so delicious that’s it should be a Tuesday Tease. Waiting that long to post this sizzle reel would be a crime against cool. Warren Ellis describes SLINGERS best.
It’s OCEAN’S ELEVEN. The Sixties original. In space. With Sean fucking Pertwee. Devised by old crony Mike Sizemore, directed by Steve Barron. It’s called SLINGERS.
SLINGERS from Mike Sizemore on Vimeo.
Thieves on the edge of Jupiter. Guns that sass your intentions.
Know this. When we talk the future of science fiction in television we’re talking about watching badass shit like this.
You look confused. Why not have a bit of background info?
Slingers is set in the year 2263 A.D., following mankind’s first interplanetary war. Humanity is now clustered into a finite, but still vast section of the universe known as Enclosed Space. Humanity won the war with an aggressive alien enemy, but at a cost. The way back to Earth is now cut off by an impassable barrier – a side effect of the blast that finally pushed the enemy back.
The show takes its name from a group of people thrown together on board an experimental spacecraft that is capable of Slinging itself to any point in space. In theory it’s the only craft capable of getting home. In reality the crew are using it to carry out a series of high tech heists and get even with those who are now exploiting their positions in the post war hierarchy.
Dominic ‘DM’ Monroe, a special ops war veteran becomes the de facto leader of this small team of thieves who rail against the decision by military command to just ‘stay where they are and make the best of it’. They’re determined to get home and if that means breaking a few rules and picking up a lot of enemies along the way then so be it.
Slingers is not your traditional science fiction show. It uses the trappings of the genre as background, but at its heart it has more in common with classic heist movies and the style of Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Exciting, visually stunning, and in turn both funny and poignant, the show is quite different from anything that has come before. It already has an overall arc planned that would see it well into three seasons, allowing the characters to become as well developed and loved as those in Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Alias.
Everyone’s making the OCEAN’S 11(60s) and FIREFLY connection. No one has noticed it’s Cowboy Bebop flair.
SLINGERS is hoping to be picked up in 2010. Writer Mike Sizemore has good things in his Slingers category on his blog. A man called Terence Eden has already started a Save Slingers campaign.
TV shows that haven’t aired their pilots already have an Internet fan base. These are the times we live in.
(via warren ellis)
