Could Eric Flint's 1632 Series Be Coming to Television?

Hot on the heels of Amazon's announcement that they are producing an adaptation of Dick's The Man in the High Castle, author Eric Flint had this to say on his blog and Facebook:

Mammoth Screen is renewing their option on the 1632 series for another year. They've hired a well-known screenwriter and have the script for the first episode. They've also made a deal with ITV Studios for worldwide distribution. This is important because ITV is a big deal in the UK. We’re still a long ways from an up-and-running TV series, but things are looking good.

Fans of 1632 are no doubt happy about this news, but if you are unfamiliar with the series, 1632 is about a small mining town in West Virginia that is transported to the middle of Germany during the Thirty Years War. If you think this sounds similar to Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time, you are not far off, but ISOT does predate 1632.

A strength (and weakness) of this series in regards to television is that it has a large canon and a diverse cast of fictional and historical characters to draw from. Unlike Stirling's Nantucket Trilogy, Flint opened 1632 to both professional and amateur authors who have contributed numerous novels and short stories. From a literary point of view its easy to get burned out on this series (I personally stopped at 1635: The Cannon Law), but I still highly recommend 1632 for its plausibility and humor.

Having such a complex (and growing) canon, however, could be a detriment to the series, especially if the producers want to take the show in a different direction than what is in the books or cut fan favorite characters from the show. With the 1632 show still in the early stages of its development, only time will tell about how the final product will look...if it even gets made in the first place.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.