Danny Boyle making an FX series about the exact same WWII story Michael Bay is adapting

By Sean O'Neal | October 11, 2013 | 9:51pm

Aux Features Film

In what is a record turnaround for news of competing projects, even in an age when you can’t pitch Frankenstein without someone immediately pitching Sexier Frankenstein, Variety reports that FX has ordered a 10-part limited series about Norwegian commandos trying to stop Hitler’s nuclear bomb—the exact same WWII story that was reported only this morning as a possible Michael Bay movie. Possibly giving its version the edge, FX has already “locked up” the Slumdog Millionaire/127 Hours team of Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, and Christian Colson to produce Telemark, and also Michael Bay isn’t involved.

Very possibly, if tacitly acknowledging the prospect of a competing film, Beaufoy is quoted as saying, “As we all know, some of the very best narrative fiction ever told is currently being created as episodic television. This incredible story is ideally suited to the slower burn and added complexity that the longer format allows.” Indeed, that is a slow burn. Anyway, no word on what this might mean for Bay’s project, though one assumes he’s already assembling his own team of crack commandos to infiltrate the FX studios and take back his plot at whatever cost—which, actually, is a Michael Bay story we would like to see.