Jean-Luc Godard memorably remarked that “all you need for a movie is a girl and a gun“, but because we like to put a fresh twist on everything, in Slingers one of our girls is a gun. The relationship that stems from Frank carrying her and not quite understanding her makes for some interesting situations and it’s this odd-couple dynamic that gets one of the biggest grins from people discussing the potential of the show.

Slingers was built around it characters first and foremost. If you like them then you’ll follow them anywhere. Luckily the setting and the technology that forms the backdrop makes for some interesting situations, but as Toby is fond of saying, if you follow Frank into a bar for a quiet drink something is going to happen. He’s just that kind of guy.

But we also spent a great deal of time thinking about current technology and where its heading. We’ll have missed stuff for sure, but every now and again we spot something that either makes us redraft a scene (because the future happens far faster these days) or smile because we know we’re not too far off the mark. Nik recently pushed this article our way via Twitter and you could be looking at one of GUN’s ancestors – right down to the beginnings of her signature green glow:

A lot of modern technology is currently catching up with the science fiction we grew up on, but that’s ok. Slingers is also about style and attitude and that’s something that our mid-Atlantic aesthetic (American scale combined with a British sensibility) has in spades. Thinking about it in that way probably goes a long way to explain the lasting influence of a character like Dredd. Or maybe it’s just his ability to kick ass and arse alike:

Slingers has killer robots too. We’re hoping our budget is as unflappable as Joe Dredd.

Note: You can check out some fan art and read the SFX magazine piece on Slingers here.

Sleepydog’s forthcoming television series, Slingers has been featured in the latest issue of SFX magazine.

Talking about how we developed the Slingers concept, writer Mike Atherton said:

“Our approach was always that Slingers would be a ’60s-style heist show that just happened to be set in space. I’m not trying to dismiss the SF element because I live and breathe this stuff myself, but our initial take was to try and focus on something different from just the tech and the ships.”

The coverage also includes some fantastic concept art by the Brownlee Brothers, so grab a copy of this month’s SFX magazine to read the full article.

Become a fan of Slingers and keep up-to-date with all the latest news by joining our Facebook group!

On the set of the Slingers sizzle, Sean Pertwee talks to writer, Mike Atherton about his thoughts on our TV project and their shared love of 2000AD.

It’s been an exciting time for the Slingers team, as interest in the TV project was ignited across the web after award-winning comic book author, Warren Ellis posted a link to our sizzle reel over on director Steve Barron’s website.

Referring to it as “your new favourite TV show”, Warren’s post sparked a flurry of comments, blog posts and tweets around the world.

John Rogers, creator and writer of hit US TV show, Leverage tweeted:

We’d already noticed that some Leverage fans had taken a shine to Slingers by interacting with Mike on Twitter. It’s been great to see what these very early supporters of the show had to say once they’d seen the characters come to life – if only for a few minutes.

We’re still compiling all the feedback almost a full week later, but we did a get a massive kick out of Duncan Jones, director of the critically acclaimed movie, Moon describing the show as: “Where you need to be”.

So far Slingers has been mentioned on:

• Paste Magazine
• Sci Fi Wire
• Twitch Film
• io9
• Topless Robot
• Slash Film
• The Huffington Post

The conversation around the show has continued on countless blogs and forums and Slingers has had some very interesting people in Los Angeles reaching for the phone. With well over 50,000 views of the sizzle reel on Vimeo and counting, the positive reaction to Slingers has been overwhelming to say the least!

We’ve also been lucky enough to have been mentioned in the same breath as shows that we’re huge fans of here in the Sleepydog office.

A massive thank you to everyone for their fantastic encouragement and support.

We’ll be posting more news on Slingers in the coming months, and have also setup a Facebook page to share updates on the project. Watch this space!

Sleepydog’s television series, Slingers and Weird & Wonderful Hotels are set to feature at MIPCOM, the world’s biggest trade event in the entertainment industry.

MIPCOM is being held in Cannes and runs from October 5-9 2009. It’s here that broadcasters, distributors and production companies from all over the world, converge to buy and sell many of the shows we see on TV.

Our distributor, The Fremantle Corporation will be at booth R 35.14 in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. So if you’re attending, be sure to drop by to find out more about our shows.

For more information about MIPCOM and details of how you can attend, visit www.mipcom.com.

Sleepydog’s forthcoming television series, Slingers and Weird & Wonderful Hotels have been featured in the latest issue of Broadcast Magazine.

Aimed at UK TV industry insiders, the article looks at the various online and social networking techniques we use to generate interest in our TV projects.

To read the full article, please visit the Broadcast website.

Haruka Abe as Marti

After two days of intense shooting and many weeks of preparation, filming of the Slingers sizzle reel is now complete! A massive thank you to all the cast and crew who worked tirelessly to produce some fantastic work.

The footage is now in the hands of the digital effects wizards who are adding the extra bells and whistles that will really give Slingers some punch. We can’t wait to see the finished result!

In the meantime, work continues on the Slingers pilot episode, so keep an eye on these pages for more info in the coming weeks.

Click thumbnail to launch gallery

Don’t they scrub up well? Toby Moores, Mark Hilton and Mike Atherton getting into character on the set of Slingers. Having been lucky enough to blag roles as extras, we’re hoping their performance was good enough to avoid the cutting room floor!

There’s a busy few days ahead as our production team make final preparations to shoot the sizzle reel for our sci-fi drama series, entitled Slingers.

The sizzle will act as a teaser for TV industry insiders, and we’ve been lucky enough to get some fantastic talent on-board, both in front of the camera and behind it.

Our scriptwriter, Mike Atherton (aka Sizemore) will be posting updates from the set, so head over to his blog to find out more.

Working for the past few months immersed in a science fiction show has been a lot of fun. Lots of work too, of course, but when a big part of the research has been revisiting shows that ran and ran such as Mission: Impossible, Columbo and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. it’s not the kind of work day that you drag your feet towards.

The great part of writing a show like Slingers is that a lot of the reference material is so readily available – for the most part I don’t have to worry too much about the future as in many ways (for better or worse) we’re already living in it. For example, the above image is taken from the trailer for upcoming apocalyptic thriller The Road. It’s a stunning image of a familiar world gone wrong, but what’s more stunning is what I read in this Esquire preview:

“When they pass through a city, there’s a shot of two ships sitting on a freeway that looks like a visual effect. That is an actual IMAX 70mm shot taken days after Katrina. We had to doctor the image, grunge it up, make it more toxic, set it into our world, but these places were not hard to find. There’s a fair amount of devastation already in the American landscape.”

Kinda horrifying.

A much more beautiful example was this shot of the Space Shuttle Atlantis caught as just a speck against the backdrop of the sun (uncropped image here). When you take into account that Atlantis is almost 25 years old and quite an old fashioned idea herself (often described as a brick with a stick by those piloting her back into our atmosphere) there’s something almost retro about our Shuttle missions.

One real piece of real life science fiction that touched me recently was the Phoenix Mars Mission from NASA and the genius stroke to anthropomorphise the little craft by giving it a voice via Twitter:

It was a thing of wonder to have the reports come back and see the little guy interact with its followers, but then as the mission came towards its end it suddenly became heartbreaking:

I used to think living in the future was all jetpacks and rocket ships, but it turns out it was all about projecting a little of our humanity out into the darkness…