Peacock Network NBC is looking add an intriguing new small screen feather with a television project called Manifest, from the one and only Robert Zemeckis.
The network has given a pilot order for the Zemeckis-driven Manifest project, reports The Tracking Board. The project will primarily be the brainchild of Jeff Rake (The Mysteries Of Laura, The Tomorrow People, Miss Match), who will serve as writer and executive producer, joined in the latter capacity by Zemeckis and Jack Rapke. The pilot will be a production of Compari Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television.
Manifest will depict a most vexing travel inconvenience, when a commercial flight full of passengers completely disappears from radar, only to suddenly resurface five years later. The catch? The ordeal was instantaneous for the passengers, who did not experience any time lapse whatsoever. Thus, the bewildered passengers return to their loved ones, who have essentially operated on the idea that they have been presumed dead for five years. Consequently, the mystery of the passengers’ disappearance will serve as the mysterious storyline centerpiece.
While some might observe that the premise of Manifest shares elements with the 2004-2007 USA series, The 4400, it also exists quite closely to a real-life headline-making incident in the March 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which similarly disappeared without any substantive traces. However, there was no indication or confirmation that the project was inspired by the incident.
Regardless, as the report aptly observes, Manifest will also serve as the third major project for legendary Back To The Future, Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? director Zemeckis to involve a major plane crash, coupled with the 2012 Denzel Washington-starring drama, Flight, and the 2000 Tom Hanks-starring island-survival/man-meets-volleyball bromance, Cast Away. The next directorial project for Zemeckis, whose recent efforts includes the 2016 WWII epic Allied and the 2015 biographical drama The Walk, will be the biographical drama The Women Of Marwen, which arrives later this year.
We’ll keep you updated on this (appropriately for Zemeckis,) time-bending television project as the developments occur.