Posted in: Preview, Starz, TV | Tagged: american psycho, bleeding cool, cable, jigsaw, lionsgate, lionsgate tv, preview, saw, spiral, streaming, television, tv

American Psycho Series in Development; Saw Series Being Considered

Lionsgate Television chairman Kevin Beggs was definitely in a talking mood today. Earlier today, Beggs offered some interesting details on the long-in-development "John Wick" prequel spinoff series The Continental– including the show's focus, its 90-minute "events" structure, if Keanu Reeves would make an appearance, and more. But it didn't stop there, with the studio head also revealing that there is a series in development based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel (and the Christian Bale-starring film adaptation) American Psycho and that the "Saw" franchise (with Spiral hitting screens soon and rumblings of a new film already underway) is in the "conversation" stage when it comes to getting a new life via series television.

In an extensive interview with Deadline Hollywood, Beggs discussed Lionsgate TV's 360 strategy when it comes to its IPs- a nice way of saying that studios are looking for ways to take popular film franchises and expand their universes into other media (in this case, television). "Speaking on the 360, it was really something we adopted three or four years ago officially. I think it was always an unofficial, I used to say that it was Lionsgate's elevator bank 360 because what would happen is you'd be in an elevator ride with an executive from one of the other creative groups and it'd be like, hey, this option is running out on this book, and we haven't been able to put it together, maybe it's a TV show? Then we'd have 24 hours to make a deal," Beggs explained. "We realized that just doing this informally wasn't so smart because we were always up against it on a clock on some deal, on a great book, and we all had to read it over the weekend and make a decision by Monday at eight. So that's when I pitched to [Lionsgate CEO] Jon [Feltheimer] the idea of actually making it a working group, a 360 group that was comprised of motion picture, television, location-based entertainment, which includes Broadway, podcasting, all of those extensions, and Starz, when the companies joined. 3 Arts also has a representative."

Having explained the company's approach, Beggs offered some example of how it's being put into play- and that's where the two projects were discussed. "It's only creative people because creative people are always leaning in to figure out how to say 'yes.' There will be business obstacles, I'm sure, later, but in that room, it's just green fields and blue skies and 'what if," Beggs revealed. "That has led to a lot of really great collaborations. We've just wrapped up 'Dear White People' which was a really good experience, 'Blindspotting' is coming up, 'American Psycho' is in development. We're always exploring what we can do in television with something like the 'Saw' franchise, so that's a conversation." In regards to the possibility of a "Saw' series, Deadline Hollywood reports Lionsgate TV "is in early talks" on a series adaptation from Mark Burg and Oren Koules' Twisted Television.

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