It’s astounding to think of all the ideas that become scripts and screenplays only to die running the gauntlet of network and studio execs. It’s astoundingly sad to consider the really great scripts that never made it to the screen. Daniel Knauf, the brains behind the eerie dustbowl of HBO’s Carnivale and the shadowy underworld of NBC’s The Black List is giving us the opportunity to do just that.
On his personal website, aptly domained at Knauf.tv, Daniel has begun publishing the pilot scripts and more from his television shows that didn’t get made. As someone who is a fledgling (actually more like larval) screenwriter this is an opportunity to learn from one of the best. At the same time it’s frustrating because as I start reading through these stories, I REALLY WANT TO SEE THESE SHOWS.
The three shows Daniel has published all look very good but one in particular really grabs me. It’s a horror series called Sleepers and it is just dripping with deliciously Lovecraftian creepiness.
SLEEPERS was an attempt to bring hard-core horror to the TV screen–not cheap jump-scares or gross-outs, but the incitement of crawling dread. My goal for the show was to create something that inspired the audience to lock and double-check their windows and doors before watching.
The series raised big, existential questions about the nature of good, evil, courage and cowardice while exploring the very fabric of quantum reality. Best of all, the fulcrum of the show was an exploration of the single most egalitarian of human superpowers: Dreaming.
Developed in collaboration with master of horror Wes Craven and inspired by the Dream Cycle mythology of H.P. Lovecraft, SLEEPERS seemed destined for the air. Given the project’s impeccable horror pedigree, my team was certain we’d be fielding multiple offers.
Alas, after over 2 years of painstaking development, we took it to markets and everyone passed. Not even a hard nibble. Ouch. This one left a mark.
H.P. Lovecraft, Wes Craven, and Daniel Knauf? Who passes on that? Someone who needs a whack upside the head with a thick, hardbound edition of the Necronomicon, that’s who. It’s a good lesson for writers just starting out though—getting rejected doesn’t necessarily mean your work isn’t good. You have to keep at it.
I haven’t delved too deeply into the other two shows yet but they look equally good. One is a post apocalyptic psychological thriller about a lone girl surviving in a world where the human race is all but extinct. The other is sort of a retro comedy about a lost television series. Knauf says there is more to come on the “unseen” page of his web site.
Years ago I had a similar experience. Well before Will Smith’s science fiction action flick I, Robot hit the theaters, the late Harlan Ellison published (in book form) the I, Robot screenplay that he wrote based on the works of science fiction icon Isaac Asimov. It was marketed as “the greatest science fiction movie never made.” I devoured the screenplay and I wanted to see it as a film. That was long before the days of Netflix and Amazon Prime and all the other options for viewing film and tv content though. Maybe today, Ellison’s script might have been made.
Maybe if enough people become aware of Knauf’s unmade scripts one of those outlets might decide to make some of these shows a reality.
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