HOLLYWOOD -- Sci Fi Channel has sealed a deal with NBC Universal TV Studio and New Line Television for "What If," a potential series that poses history-altering questions and then creates new realities via computer generated animation.
Cabler is developing the project as a weekly one-hour for launch next year. Producers hope to dramatize several mind-bending scenarios, including a world in which the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs missed Earth, or today as it would look had Nazi Germany won World War II.
"Who hasn't wondered what our daily lives might be like if certain moments in history had gone a different way?" Sci Fi exec VP Mark Stern said. " 'What If' takes a thought-provoking approach to imagining such possibilities."
Stern said should the project move forward to series, it would likely air in the cabler's alternative programming block, home to the reality show "Ghost Hunters" and the animated comedy "Tripping the Rift."
"What If" will utilize the same CGI technologies that have been used in such events as "Pompeii: The Last Day" on Discovery Channel and the BBC's factual drama "Supervolcano," which dramatized what would happen if Yellowstone erupted. Episodes will also weave in live-action re-creations, mock doc footage and interviews with relevant personalities.
Big possibilities
New Line TV head of programming Jon Kroll, who will exec produce the series, said "What If" has the potential to become a long-lasting franchise given the virtually endless lists of "what if" questions to explore.
"We're going to tell these big stories about things that never happened -- but the eye-popping visuals we're using will make you think they had," Kroll said. "The show will literally illustrate the ripple effect of a big or slight change in history, and how it affects even today's popular culture."
Project was inspired by the "What If" book series published by Putnam.
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