Ava DuVernay's DMZ pilot for HBO Max actually managed to finish filming

By Sam Barsanti | March 18, 2020 | 2:50am

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Ava DuVernay's DMZ pilot for HBO Max actually managed to finish filming

Photo: Frazer Harrison

We’ve heard a lot about the various TV and film projects that had to shut down production or bump their release date in order to try and protect people from the coronavirus, but here’s one TV pilot that actually got done right under the wire: As reported by Coming Soon, the pilot for Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Brian Wood and Riccardo Buchielli’s DMZ just finished filming in the last couple days. Unfortunately, assuming it gets through edits and whatever other steps come between filming a TV show and letting people see the TV show, it is still just a pilot. It wouldn’t sustain us hungry TV viewers for very long if there’s a prolonged break between now and whenever other TV shows can start production again.

DMZ, which is being developed for HBO Max, takes place in a future where another Civil War has turned Manhattan into a demilitarized zone (or “DMZ”), with Rosario Dawson starring as a medic traveling through the city as she helps people and searches for her son (which is a different character than who the comic primarily focused on). Brian Wood has been hit with a few sexual misconduct allegations in the past year, so there’s a chance the shift in POV character could have something to do with HBO Max purposefully separating this DMZ from its source material—or it was just a completely unrelated choice, since the show can now have a female protagonist. Anyway, Dawson had nice things to say about the project on Twitter: