Outlander comes to Starz

I am not a huge fan of Diana Gabaldon's "Outlander" series, but I love the idea that it's being brought to life by STARZ. It looks like a lot of fun. You can find the trailer here on Deadline Hollywood.

Kattomic Energy Interview: John Harrison

 John Harrison began his career directing rock videos and working as 1st Ass't Director for famed horror director, George Romero (Night of the Living Dead/ Creepshow). Harrison wrote and directed multiple episodes of Romero's classic TV series, Tales From The Darkside before helming Tales From the Darkside, The Movie for Producer Richard Rubinstein and Paramount Pictures which won Harrison the Grand Prix du Festival at Avoriaz, France.

Harrison has written and directed episodes of Tales From The Crypt (HBO), Earth 2 (NBC), Profiler (NBC), and Leverage (TNT). He has written and directed world premier movies for the USA Network and Starz/Encore.

Harrison’s six-hour miniseries adaptation of Frank Herbert's monumental bestseller, Dune, which he also directed, was an Emmy-winning success in the U.S., then internationally both in its broadcast premieres and subsequently in home video.

Harrison’s children of Dune, another six-hour mini-series encompassing the next two novels of Frank Herbert's mythic adventure series which he wrote and co-produced, was another Emmy winner for the SyFy Channel.

Harrison co-wrote the animated feature, dinosaur for Disney. He also wrote the adaptation of Clive Barker’s fantasy novels, Abarat, also for Disney. In the Fall of ’06, Harrison reunited with mentor George Romero to produce Romero’s film Diary of the Dead. His action suspense thriller, Blank Slate, for producer Dean Devlin, which Harrison wrote and directed, aired as twenty episode micro-series on TNT in the Fall of ’08. Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, which he wrote and directed, was released in 2009.

Between 2010 and 2012, Harrison has continued his relationship with TNT directing episodes of the series Leverage and, most recently, with his adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich story, Rear Window, for Executive Producer Michael Douglas.

Harrison has written screenplays for Robert Zemeckis , Richard Donner, Will Smith and Dean Devlin among others, and he has directed such diverse talent as William Hurt, Julianne Moore, Tim Roth, Annabella Sciorra, Peter Fonda, Debbie Harry, Steve Buscemi, Eric Stoltz and many others.

He is currently in the U.K. filming the webseries Residue.

Destiny Gardens is his first novel.

KT: You’re a successful television and screenwriter/director/composer--what made you decide to write a novel? Is this a story that’s been percolating for a while?

JH: Like many moments in my career, the decision to embark upon this new endeavor called Destiny Gardens was as much accidental as deliberate. For example, I never intended to write music for movies, but I was the guy with the piano. So when my partners and I needed a score for our first film, that job fell to me. That led to my doing the music for several of George Romero’s films, and some of my own. I never intended to be a screenwriter, but when I came to Hollywood I quickly realized that the only way I might get directing assignments was to write my way into them. So I learned the craft of screenwriting.

Destiny Gardens took an equally circuitous route. It was a story I had been carrying around for a long time. Certainly not as fully developed as the novel is now, but a story with themes and characters and moments that are all there in the novel. I originally tried to develop it as a TV series with two producer friends of mine, Robert Heath (Hot In Cleveland, Mad About You, About Jim) and Mark Waxman (Beakman’s World, Sweet Justice). We never got it off the ground, so I decided to write a screenplay and mount it as a low-budget independent film. That, too, fell by the wayside as other work intruded.

Finally, while directing Leverage episodes for producer Dean Devlin and TNT, I was searching for a new project of my own to start. I kept coming back to DG. Every writer has a story he or she can’t shake, and this one was mine. So I decided to use my time off between Leverage episodes to see if I could finally get the entire story down. I began by writing what I thought was a traditional film treatment but soon realized I was, in fact, novelizing it. So I decided to keep going. Got about a third into it before, once again, other work intruded. Some screenplay assignments and more Leverage episodes. Work on DG was fitful.

During the Summer of 2012, though, I finally hunkered down, and between directing gigs I finished it.