Because something has to be the new Game Of Thrones, damn it, Variety reports that Strike Back executive producer James Dormer is adapting the epic poem Beowulf into “a Western set in the Dark Ages of Britain’s mythic past.” Dormer compares the series to filthy, vermin-ridden 21st-century peasants gathering around the digital hearth to hear a bard (that’s him) sing a tale of monsters, magic, and probably extensive female nudity:
“Hundreds of years ago our ancestors listened to the story of Beowulf because it was a great adventure story — it scared them, thrilled them, made them laugh and cry. But they also listened because they recognized themselves and their fears in it. By holding a mirror up to them this story helped define them and, thus, us. So it’s incredibly exciting to have the opportunity to make it relevant again for a wide audience — to let them own it again. To let them see themselves in it.”
Because holding up a mirror to peoples’ fears can also lead to lucrative licensing deals, this isn’t the first attempt to capture the popular imagination with Beowulf in the past decade or so. There was the 2007 movie version, which reflected how unsettling motion-capture technology is, as well as an as-yet-unrealized SyFy series that reflected the pop culture blogger’s primal fear of reporting on TV shows that never actually get made.