We’ve recently had (sadly false) rumors of a “Twin Peaks” return, and Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” (trailer here) looks like it has a very "Twin Peaks"-y vibe to accompany those genre elements too, and now Fox has a show that's said to be “evocative of 'Twin Peaks'” from the twistmeister general himself, M. Night Shyamalan. “Wayward Pines” (even the name screams “Twin Peaks”) will apparently be a 10-12 part event series that the network anticipates getting on the air within the next 12-24 months.
The show will be based on the novel of the same name by Blake Crouch, which is apparently “an intense, mind-bending thriller” that focuses on a Secret Service agent arriving in a small country town to investigate a crime. So yeah, it’s pretty much "Twin Peaks" then. Except the crime here is different – it’s the disappearance of two federal agents — and when he starts to investigate, he finds more questions rather than answers. Okay, yeah, it’s still pretty much "Twin Peaks." But anyway, the Secret Service agent soon begins to suspect that there’s something odd about Wayward Pines and faces the possibility he’ll never leave there alive. Hey, here’s an idea. Why not get Kyle MacLachlan to play him and he could get shot in the gut at the some point?
Anyway, we’re guessing that there has to be some originality in there somewhere, even if the idea sounds like it’s been "Inception"-ed straight out of the mind of David Lynch. Maybe there’s a more detailed synopsis which can highlight just how different this story is, but the core of the idea is undeniably and inexorably linked with the early '90s cult classic. The script for “Wayward Pines” was written on spec by Chad Hodge (he of the ill-fated “The Playboy Club”) and will be exec produced by Hodge, Shyamalan, Donald De Line (“Green Lantern”) and Ashwin Rajan (“Devil” and “After Earth”). Those names and credits don’t exactly fill us with confidence either, so you can chalk this project down as one that can only pleasantly surprise. [Deadline]