Twentieth Century FoxYou know Taken's Bryan Mills has a "very particular set of skills," but do you know how he got them? Well, you're about to find out. E! News has confirmed NBC has ordered a Taken prequel straight to series with Luc Besson, the mastermind behind the hit Liam Neeson action trilogy, attached to the series. Besson is stet to produce; right now no showrunner or writer is attached to the project.
According to Deadline, the Taken prequel series will find a young Bryan Mills family-less—no wife or kids to be taken—as he goes on his CIA missions, acquiring the "very particular set of skills" he used throughout the three movies in the Taken series to inflict pain and rescue his family members. But the series is set in modern day, not the past…it's not time traveling, just time fudging. Obviously, Neeson is not attached to the project.
Of course, taking a hit flick and rejiggering it for TV is nothing new. This season there's Rush Hour and Limitless on CBS, Galaxy Quest in development for Amazon, Minority Report set for this season on Fox with Urban Cowboy and Fatal Attraction in the works, The Notebook in development at The CW, Uncle Buck on ABC, Scream and Teen Wolf on MTV—and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Hit shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Parenthood and In the Heat of the Night and M*A*S*H were all based on films. And of course, not every translation is a success. In the late '80s and early '90s we got TV shows based on Working Girl, Dirty Dancing and Baby Boom and they were quickly canceled. Besson's had some success in turning his movies into TV shows with La Femme Nikita (which had two TV versions, La Femme Nikita with Peta Wilson and Nikita with Maggie Q) and Transporter.
Will you tune into the Taken series?
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)