As you may remember from our 2008 coverage of the San Diego Comic Con, we broke the news that Charles and Daniel Knaupf were hard at work translating the Phantom to TV…

Well, now SyFy (or the artist formerly known as the Sci Fi Channel, take your pick) has officially greenlit a “backdoor pilot” for the oft-rebooted comic property. The really interesting part? This Phantom “pilot” will actually be a four-hour film. If it goes well, it could continue on as a full-time series a la Battlestar Galactica.

“The four-hour format allows us to command large dollars around the world for our shows that puts about ($4 million-$6 million) of production on the screen per hour,” Robert Halmi Jr., president and CEO of RHI entertainment, told the Hollywood Reporter. “It gives the network a chance to try a concept with the same production values, if not better, than you’d get for a series.”

According to the channel, this is supposed to be a more realistic work, like the Dark Knight or Iron Man. “It isn’t a guy in purple tights,” said exec VP of original programming Mark Stern.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 am and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.