Michael Crichton is well-known for a large body of work that includes novels and films (and often films based on his novels) such as
Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery, Looker, Runaway, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Congo, Twister, Sphere, The 13th Warrior and
Timeline. And it's well-known that he's the man behind the long-running hit medical drama
ER; did you know he was trained as a medical doctor? He attended (and qualified at) Harvard Medical School until 1969! And that's the year of Crichton's first bestselling novel (and the first released under his own name, instead of a pen name):
The Andromeda Strain, which became the classic 1971 film directed by Robert Wise.
It's been almost a year since
Variety first
reported that A&E would remake
The Andromeda Strain as a mini-series, which the trade publication later
let us know would have a splendid cast, and was due to release in sometime 2008.
The new mini-series is going to be an updated version of the story, we hear, and is coming from brothers Tony and Ridley Scott (two celebrated filmmakers who have previously collaborated on TV and cinema works like
Numb3rs, RKO 281, The Company and
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). Mikael Salomon directs, and the cast includes Benjamin Bratt (
Law & Order), Rick Schroder (
NYPD Blue, Silver Spoons), Christa Miller (
Scrubs), Eric McCormack (
Will & Grace) and Andre Braugher (
Homicide: Life on the Street, Gideon's Crossing, Poseidon).
To our knowledge, A&E
says it is coming in the "Spring" but has not yet announced a specific airdate for this production, and presumably that is the reason there is no street date for the DVD of it, either. However, late yesterday Universal Studios Home Video made several menu screens available for a DVD release from the upcoming mini-series. We've got a look at them for you:
