Filmmaker Leigh Whannell may be best known for his work in the horror genre having co-created the Saw series alongside James Wan before going on to write the first two installments in the Insidious franchise and pull double duty directing the third, but before he returned to familiar territory with the critically-acclaimed and hugely profitable The Invisible Man, the 43 year-old dipped his toes into unfamiliar waters with 2018’s sci-fi thriller Upgrade.
The movie starred Logan Marshall-Green as a quadriplegic fitted with an experimental microchip that gives an AI named STEM control over his body, which he then uses to track down and seek revenge on the men that killed his wife. The $3 million film was a solid hit at the box office after earning over six times its budget in theaters, and quickly earned a reputation as one of the most criminally underrated and overlooked original sci-fi movies of recent years.
Upgrade was never exactly designed with sequels in mind, but it’s nonetheless been announced that Blumhouse are developing a follow-up series that will take place several years after the events of the movie, with Whannell returning to direct the entire run of episodes in what will also mark his TV debut.
Having recently signed an exclusive first-look deal with Universal following the success of The Invisible Man, it certainly hasn’t taken him long to settle on his first project and the Australian will also be acting as an executive producer alongside Tim Walsh, who jumps right back into showrunning following the recent cancellation of his Bourne spinoff Treadstone.
Small screen spinoffs based on movies are becoming an increasingly regular occurrence these days, but anyone who’s seen Upgrade knows that it barely scratched the surface of the concept’s potential, and the proven success of the Blumhouse/Whannell partnership instantly makes the show a hugely exciting prospect.
