Three years after lighting up the literary world in 1996, Fight Club took Hollywood and several generations of moviegoers by storm, and it seemed very likely that Chuck Palahniuk would become the next go-to author for more extreme cinema. Despite many attempts with many different books, the only other live-action adaptation of Palahniuk’s work was 2008’s Choke, written and directed by current S.H.I.E.L.D. star Clark Gregg. That could all change soon, though, as the author revealed a TV series is currently in development based on his wild 1999 dark comedy Survivor. In his words:
Survivor is in development as a television series. Jim Uhls, the screenwriter of Fight Club is writing the first season. That is all I am allowed to tell you.
Chuck Palahniuk dropped that exciting infobomb on fans during a recent Reddit AMA, and now all I can think about is how difficult it would be getting that story turned into episodes that would earn a network’s commitment. Thankfully, the author revealed the involvement of familiar name Jim Uhls, who will hopefully be able to do for cults and mass suicides what he did for Meatloaf’s man-boobs and structured anarchy. Well, that doesn’t sound quite right.
The story at the heart of Survivor deals with the Creedish Cult, a group that guides its members to be servants to others in society, believing that a sign from God is coming, to which they will deliver themselves unto him through suicide. Assuming the TV would follow the book for the most part, it would take place after that “sign” came, leaving main character Tender Branson as one of the only surviving members of the cult, which makes him the object of attention to some. Of course, a good part of his correspondence with others comes via a series of phone calls from people who are misdialing a suicide hotline number, and as morbid as that sounds, those instances could actually make for some killer recurring moments in a TV series as Tender lives his strange life.
A Survivor series – no relation to the WWE pay-per-view – obviously couldn’t take place on a broadcast network, and this material would presumably have to be watered down for most cable networks, too. Hulu probably won’t want to jump in with another cult series while The Path is still going strong, so now it’s up to the other streaming sites and premium cable networks to start having discussions. Really, though, it could be that part of Palahniuk’s unspoken information involves the project already being in negotiations with a network. Either way, Freeform isn’t getting in on this.
This is great news, but we’re also still hoping that a TV version of the comic sequel Fight Club 2 will happen one day, as well as either feature or TV adaptations of Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, Diary, Rant and whatever else studios want to shell out money for. Hell, I’d even take a grittier version of Choke.
We obviously have no clue when more news on Survivor is coming, but we can’t wait to see the confusion when people thinking they’re reading about the CBS reality show get an eyeful of something that would make Jeff Probst run screaming.
