The superhero team of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America isn't the only group of powered-up characters "Avengers" screenwriter Zak Penn is tackling these days. The comics-friendly movie scribe recently had a new television series green-lit for the Syfy network that follows a team of characters with "hyperdeveloped neurological abilities."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Syfy gave the go-ahead to a 90-minute pilot for "Alphas," a project written by Penn and Michael Karnow. The series has been kicking around various networks for two years now under the working title "Section 8," including a stint at ABC when it was considered for airing after episodes of "Lost."
The network went into pre-production on the series before the Writers Guild strike and subsequent creative differences stalled the project.
"What we loved about this idea is that it played into a new way of approaching the superhero genre: the idea of ordinary people who have one slightly extraordinary feature about them and are singularly not so special but together can do extraordinary things was very attractive," said Syfy's executive VP of original programming, Mark Stern.
Penn, whose screenwriting credits include 2008's "The Incredible Hulk," "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "X2," is currently hard at work on a screenplay for Marvel Studios' much-anticipated, superhero team-up film "The Avengers." There's currently no schedule as to when "Alphas" will debut on Syfy, but the TV series isn't likely to affect Penn's "Avengers" commitments.
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