Alfonso Cuarón is a busy man. Not content with dazzling the audience at Comic-Con by showing off the new footage for his upcoming film Gravity, he also stopped by the panel for NBC’s Revolution to unveil another snippet he kept hidden up his figurative sleeve – news of a collaboration with all round genius J.J. Abrams on a new TV show for NBC called Believe.
Co-created with writer Mark Friedman, Believe follows a little girl named Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) who, as she grows older, gains powers beyond her control. She’s orphaned early on, and taken into the care of foster parents, but they aren’t able to fully accomodate her abilities. A mysterious group of benevolent outsiders led by a mysterious man named Winter (Delroy Lindo) take it upon themselves to enlist the help of a wrongly convicted Death Row inmate, Tate (Jake McLaughlin). The connection between Tate and Bo is as of yet undefined, as all we’ve seen is one pesky, albeit impressive, trailer:
The footage was taken from the Alfonso Cuarón-directed pilot episode, and features some of his trademark moves – a single, intricate take to set the scene, replete with mind-scrambling photo-realistic CGI and emotionally intense close-ups.
Believe is scheduled to debut on NBC in 2014, so we’ve got a little while to go yet. In the meantime, there’s sure to be a promotional blitz for such a high-profile project from a veritable dream team of collaborative partners.
Meanwhile, Alfonso Cuarón’s film Gravity is released this October, and early reviews are extremely mixed – some love the film, some hate it. Whatever happens, it’s shaping up to be an extremely interesting project, and anything that divisive is surely a positive. It’s good for the soul, you might say. If you were incredibly old.