Sam Esmail’s ‘Metropolis’ Series Is Scrapped — Sorry, German Expressionism Fans
Ach der lieber! German Expressionism fans everywhere are in sorrow as Sam Esmail’s seven-years-in-the-making passion project, a series adaptation of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” has been shelved, Deadline confirms.
The series, from Universal Cable Productions (UCP), had been prepping for production in Australia and was expected to be the biggest TV series ever shot there. It was going to stream on Apple TV+, which had given it a full series order last year. “Push costs and uncertainty related to the ongoing strike led to this difficult decision,” a UCP told Deadline.
“Metropolis” is just the latest casualty of the ongoing WGA strike (and possible SAG-AFTRA strike, once that union’s own agreement with the AMPTP ends July 1): the third seasons of “P-Valley” and “Yellowjackets” have been indefinitely delayed, as has the Disney+ show “Daredevil: Born Again” and Season 2 of “Severance.”
Esmail has had a flurry of new shows in recent years: Just since 2020 there’s been USA’s “Briarpatch,” Starz’s “Gaslit,” and Peacock’s “Angelyne” and “The Resort.” But it’s undeniable “Metropolis” had the biggest potential for impact, reflecting the kind of major investment Apple TV+ has given to “Foundation” and the upcoming third part of the “Band of Brothers” trilogy, the Austin Butler-starring “Masters of the Air.”
When “Metropolis” premiered in Berlin in 1927, it was something wholly original: a silent sci-fi movie with striking designs (the robot Maria is an obvious influence on C-3PO from “Star Wars”), a rich allegory about class oppression and the gap between technological sophistication and human development, and a full symphonic score, with a complete orchestra playing live underneath the screen. It was the most ambitious film its director Fritz Lang had attempted to that point. Multiple cinematic genres can be traced to Lang (Indiana Jones-style adventure in “The Spiders,” espionage capers in “Spione,” fantasy epics in “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” procedural thrillers with “M”) but none more clearly than sci-fi with “Metropolis.” Its futuristic cityscapes, skyscrapers arrayed like canyons with intersecting elevated trains and zig-zagging airships seemed very much to set the stage for the city planet Coruscant in the “Star Wars” films.
“Metropolis” existed in an incomplete form for decades, its full print thought lost. But around 2010, a complete print was rediscovered and issued to the public via a Kino Lorber DVD.
Lang had many great achievements after “Metropolis” — including in Hollywood where he became one of the foremost directors for film noir after fleeing Germany when the Nazis took power. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had wanted him to take control of the German film industry, but, being Jewish and finding the Third Reich repellant, he fled (and made some great anti-Nazi films in Hollywood). His wife, Thea von Harbou, whose 1925 novel was the basis for the “Metropolis” film, however, stayed and served the Nazis following their divorce.
Losing “Metropolis” now is one of the biggest consequences of the strike for future programming schedules to date. One wonders if it’s a domino.