Posted in: CW, TV | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, cw, drama, horror, rob thomas, streaming, television, terror, the lost boys, tv, vampires

"The Lost Boys" EP Rob Thomas: "We are Going to Shoot the Pilot This Fall"

Just when it looked like The Lost Boys might be "lost" once again with the news that the CW passed on the pilot in May, there was a glimmer of hope when the network ordered the project to be retooled – and that included recasting. In fact, Medalion Rahimi (NCIS: Los Angeles) and Dakota Shapiro (Valley of the Boom) were the only actors to have their options extended and will co-star in a new, reworked pilot – expected to begin filming late 2019. Based on Warner Bros.' 1987 horror film of the same name, the pilot was written by Heather Mitchell (Scandal) – with Shapiro set as lead vamp David (originally played by 24's Kiefer Sutherand) and Rahimi as Stella (a variation on Jami Gertz's (Square Pegs) character Star from the original film).

Now executive producer Rob Thomas (iZombie, Veronica Mars) is giving fans an update on where things stand via Deadline Hollywood:

● Just so there's no confusion, Thomas wants it known there wasn't much work that needed to be done on the pilot script ("There were scenes that we thought we could do a better job on, so it's going through a 40% rewrite. It's not a total rewrite"), and filming of the pilot looks to be on pace:

"The writer, Heather Mitchell, is doing a rewrite on the script right now, we have gotten through the notes process. We are going to shoot the pilot this fall."

● Casting for Rahimi and Shapiro's co-stars has yet to begin.

● While Thomas describes his original pitch as being a little too "outside-the-box" for the network's tastes, he feels Mitchell's script fits more with in line with the original film:

"Two years ago, I wrote a very outside-the-box version of it. The network didn't want to go that far outside the box. So fortunately, the writer who is working on it right now, Heather Mitchell, loves the original movie and is eager to make the series look a little bit more like the original Lost Boys. It's two human brothers showing up in this California beach town with the amusement park and a vampire infestation. It's going to have a lot in common with the movie."

● While Thomas would have loved to see his version come to life, he's very much looking forward to where this current version takes the story:

"It's exciting. I had a way I wanted to do it that was exciting to me. Once the network didn't want to do it, I was eager to give them the version they would like to put on the air, usually that's just smart television producing. I think it would've been very hard for me but I love that she is doing it, I love that she is a big enough fan of the movie that she wants to keep it a lot more recognizable."

In the CW's proposed The Lost Boys reboot, the sudden death of their father forces brothers Michael and Sam Emerson to move to Santa Carla with their mother, Lucy – who hopes to start anew in the town where she grew up. But the brothers soon find themselves being drawn deeper and deeper into the seductive world of Santa Carla's eternally beautiful and youthful undead.

Thomas was first approached about the project ahead of the 2016-2017 development season, though it would end up not going to pilot. The network was interested in redeveloping the project even though Thomas' work on the upcoming Veronica Mars return to Hulu keeping him busy, Mitchell's script was ordered to pilot. While Mitchell's script is still in place, the inital pilot apparently didn't live up to the script's quality and nver came together enough for the network's liking.

If there's one thing Thomas wants fans to know, it's that he wants to the project take flight just as much as they do:

"This has been a odyssey for me with Lost Boys. I have been trying to get Lost Boys — I was about to say trying to get Lost Boys to see the light of day, and that sounded so embarrassingly punny to me that I will rephrase that sentence. I've been trying to get Lost Boys off the ground for the better part of four years now, first as a movie, then as a pilot that I wrote, and now as a pilot that Heather's written. We just shot a pilot that did not quite work; we plan on shooting another one. Hopefully this fourth attempt of ours will be the charm. Lost Boys deserves to be on TV."

Mitchell is set to executive produce the project, alongside Thomas and Dan Etheridge for Spondoolie and Mike Karz and Bill Bindley for Gulfstream. Spondoolie's Rebecca Franko produces alongside Gulfstream's Juliana Janes.

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