Back in November, Kevin Bacon revealed that he is set to star in and executive produce a new TV series based on his 1990 cult classic Tremors. We haven’t heard much about the series since then, but in a new interview, Kevin Bacon confirmed that the show is moving forward at Amazon. The actor currently stars on the new Amazon Studios pilot I Love Dick.
The last we heard about this project was in May, when Kevin Bacon confirmed it would be a 10-episode miniseries. The series will be produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse and Universal Cable Productions, and it had previously been rumored that the show would find a home at Syfy. However, during a new interview with Collider, Kevin Bacon confirmed the project is happening at Amazon, while teasing that the story won’t necessarily follow the straight-to-video sequels.
“We’re at Amazon. We’re still waiting for a draft, but I’m 100% on board with that. It’s great. It’s a super cool idea. They went and made a bunch of sequels to the movie. I want to put those aside because, first of all, I wasn’t in them. But what I was really interested in was taking this guy and, 25 years later, seeing what happened to him, to his dreams, and to his life. Andrew Miller, who’s writing the script, came up with this really, really interesting take on it, and I think it could be a lot of fun.”
The series will be based on the original movie, which follows two ranch hands who discover massive, killer worms terrorizing a small town. The original movie also starred Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Reba McIntire and Michael Gross, the later of which went on to star in all of the Tremors straight-to-video movie sequels, including last year’s Tremors 5: Bloodlines. We don’t know for sure if Michael Gross will be returning as Burt Gummer quite yet, or if any of the other original stars are being lined up for this series. Kevin Bacon also revealed that, at the time, he considered Tremors a low point in his career, but now he thinks it’s a great movie.
“You never know. It did become a real classic. It was also at a time when the VHS was exploding. Movies took on a life of their own. The last thing you wanted, in that point in our industry, was to have a movie go straight to VHS. Tremors did not perform at the box office, but it did great on VHS. When I came up with the idea and reached out to Blumhouse about looking at it again, I looked at the movie, and I don’t look at my movies, at all. I went back and put it up on my screen at home and went, ‘Wow, this is a really good movie!’ I just didn’t get it when I was there and in it. I wrote it off ’cause it wasn’t a hit, and I really needed one. But, I think it’s a really good movie. It’s unusual and it’s funny. Doing funny scary is something that is rarely good and rarely works, and it’s also something that’s incredibly hard to market. I think that was part of the problem. Funny scary is tough, unless you’re Snakes on a Plane.”
Amazon Studios operates quite differently from traditional TV networks, with viewers actually given access to watch and rate their slate of pilot episodes, with their feedback helping to decide which shows actually move forward and get series orders. We’re not sure when exactly production will start on the pilot, or who else will be cast. Regardless, when the pilot is ready, Tremors fans will have an active voice in deciding whether or not the show will move forward.