Gale Anne Hurd Producing ‘Area 51’ TV Show
Gale Anne Hurd, the producer who started her career with Roger Corman and whose resume includesThe Terminator,Aliens,ArmageddonandThe Walking Dead, is going to Area 51. Hurd’s company, Valhalla Entertainment, has optioned theAnnie JacobsenbookArea 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Baseto develop as a TV series.Karl Gajdusek(Dead Like Me, the Nic Cage filmTrespass,Oblivion) will script and act as showrunner.Deadlinesays the series will follow “two men working on the base who are thrust into danger when they uncover secrets that the government will protect at any cost.”
Jacobsen’s book is based on interviews with nineteen men who served at Area 51 and over fifty others with links to the operation. Whether the TV show that results from the book will really have any more ties to ‘reality’ than so many other film and TV projects linked to Area 51 remains to be seen.
This makes me wonder once more what happened to the feature film calledArea 51, whichParanormal Activitydirector Oren Peli shot two years ago. It has gone in for reshoots, and Paramount is holding the project in a vault only a bit less secretive than those are the namesake military site. Given how enthusiastically Paramount promotes anything related to Peli’sParanormal Activityfranchise, and the way that his TV showThe River(for which Peli is a producer) is being promoted, one would think that Paramount would be eager to start making money on theArea 51film. Can it be that bad? Worse thanApollo 18?
Here’s a video interview with author Annie Jacobsen, and which also features an CIA-produced film about Area 51, produced in the ’50s.
Annie Jacobsen on Book, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military BasefromDemocracy Now!onVimeo.
