Space Nation TV series set by Roland Emmerich, based on a video game
‘Independence Day’ and ‘Those About To Die’ directors Roland Emmerich and Marco Weber (‘The Thirteenth Floor’, ‘Igby Goes Down’) are developing a live-action TV series based on ‘Space Nation Online’, the titular Web3 video game at the center of their new transmedia IP company, Space Nation Inc.
According to Space Nation Inc. the series will chart the origins of the epic story that began with the recent soft launch of Space Nation Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that sends players to a distant star cluster where humanity has settled after the destruction of the Earth.”
The series is developed and produced by Emmerich and Weber.
When it comes to how the “Space Nation” show will be distributed, Weber says, “we want to take an approach that fits within the overall philosophy of what we’re doing with the game, with our economy” — which means we don’t develop it for a streamer or network. “We may sell a second window to one of the streamers, but all on a licensing basis,” Weber said. “We’re not looking for a streamer to come in and buy the IP outright. And our goal is to be able to self-finance a significant part of the budget through our own economy and our own token.”
Space Nation was founded by Emmerich, Weber, and game developers Jerome Wu and Tony Tang as a company focused on “the first of its kind transmedia IP spanning video games, online content, and TV/streaming.” Backed by $50 million in funding, the company’s first project, the Web3 game “Space Nation Online,” launched on September 27.
“I came across this project through Marco and he was really excited about it, and whatever he’s excited about, I’m excited about it too,” Emmerich said. Variety. “We talked about me having to develop my own [Web3] spaceships, and so on, and so on. And so there is an opportunity to buy a spaceship that I designed, but it’s just one of many, many things that we offer. What we also want to offer is a TV program. A TV show that shows the origins of this whole situation, because aliens came to Earth, destroyed Earth and we had to go into space.”
Ahead of the launch, Emmerich, Weber and filmmaker Martin Weisz (“The Hills Have Eyes 2”) launched a series of free animated shorts featuring “Space Nation Online” character Zoey (voiced and played by actress Winona Weber), an alien teenage space pirate , and her ill-fated attempts to go viral online. Jess Lebow, head writer of Space Nation Online, and Weber joined as co-writers. A spin-off of the short film is currently in development.
“One of the things that Jerome, Tony, Roland and I wanted to make sure from the beginning is that people realize that this is a very solid long-term story that we want to develop,” Weber said. “That includes first the game, the platform that we built, and that will now, in the next step, include some transmedia IPs that we want to develop so that all users can see that this is not a quick cash grab, where people are trying to make a token that promises a game, and then they’re gone. It’s the exact opposite. We launched the game to the tune of almost $50 million in investments through the management buyout and funding we raised from VCs and investors, and we still haven’t launched the token or anything because we want to stabilize the ecosystem first . , and that is our biggest concern right now. And we are doing quite well.”
