EXCLUSIVE: I have learned that Gaumont International Television’s
Barbarella has been set up at
Amazon Studios, which has taken in the pilot script
penned by feature writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (
Skyfall). I hear search is underway for a showrunner in anticipation of a pilot pickup.
Barbarella is based on the character created by Jean-Claude Forest in a graphic novel and made famous in the 1968 sci-fi movie staring Jane Fonda as a sexpot tasked with finding and stopping an evil weapons inventor. The project, which
has been in the works at GIT for a year and a half, is executive produced by Nicolas Refn (
Valhalla Rising),
who had been attached to direct, and Martha De Laurentiis, whose late husband Dino produced the 1968 movie. GIT has two other series –
Hannibal on NBC and
Hemlock Grove on Netflix — with a third,
Narco, eyeing a green light at Netflix. Amazon Studios has five drama and comedy pilots in the works following the launch of its first original series, comedies
Alpha House and
Betas. Purvis and Wade are repped by UTA and Casarotto and Neil Meyer; Refn by WME.