The writing duo behind the 2015 Syfy series “12 Monkeys” – based on a 1995 time-travel movie of the same name — did not set out to reimagine the mind-bending Terry Gilliam film. While their previous credits included work on “Star Trek: Enterprise” as well as Fox’s dystopian future series “Terra Nova,” Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett reportedly wound up on the radar of “12 Monkeys” producers thanks to a spec script.
Most of the time, spec scripts are written as a way of showing a writer’s voice and ability, rather than with the intention of becoming a film or TV show. In this instance, Matalas and Fickett had a time-travel script that caught the attention of producers who were already considering adapting “12 Monkeys” for television.
“When they read it, they really liked our approach to the time-travel conspiracy,” Matalas said in an interview with TV Fanatic. “They had been working on turning ’12 Monkeys’ into a TV series for some time but were never able to crack it.”
Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett were hesitant to take on 12 Monkeys
The prospect of adapting an already successful movie into a new medium brought with it a fair amount of trepidation. Terry Matalas revealed that, initially, he and Travis Fickett were prepared to turn down the project.
“Obviously, we took the meeting because ’12 Monkeys’ is one of our favorite films,” Matalas said, “but we showed a good amount of resistance in the meeting by saying, you know, ’12 Monkeys’ is a perfect puzzle. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.” Following that first meeting with Atlas Entertainment, Matalas revealed he and Fickett “kind of walked away and said, ‘You know, we don’t think so.'”
It was during a discussion after the meeting that the writers began to have second thoughts. According to Matalas, the two discussed different possibilities and characters they could explore and “started asking all these moral questions about changing time. What would other people feel about you changing their future? What came out of it was a really interesting new take on a gritty sci-fi time travel story.” He and Fickett went back to lay out their “12 Monkeys” pitch, and the rest is history … unless someone goes back and changes it.