Space Nation TV Series Set From Roland Emmerich Based on Video Game

“Independence Day” and “Those About To Die” director Roland Emmerich and Marco Weber (“The Thirteenth Floor,” “Igby Goes Down”) are developing a live-action TV series based on “Space Nation Online,” the titular Web3 video game at the center of their new transmedia IP company, Space Nation Inc.

Per Space Nation Inc.,”The series will map out the origins of the epic story that began with the recent soft launch of Space Nation Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that sends players to a distant star cluster where humanity has settled following Earth’s destruction.”

The series will be developed and executive-produced by Emmerich and Weber.

When it comes to how the “Space Nation” show will be distributed, Weber says “we want to take a a approach that fits into the overall philosophy of what we’re doing with the with the game, with our economy” — meaning not developing it for a streamer or network. “We might sell a second window to one of the streamers, but all on a licensing basis,” Weber said. “We’re not looking for a streamer to come in and outright buy the IP. And our goal is to be able to finance a significant portion of the budget ourselves through our own economy and our own token.”

Space Nation was founded by Emmerich, Weber and game developers Jerome Wu and Tony Tang as a company focused on “first-of-its-kind transmedia IP spanning video games, online content, and TV/streaming.” Backed with $50 million in funding, the venture’s first project, the Web3 game “Space Nation Online,” soft launched Sept. 27.

“I came to this project through Marco and he was very excited about it, and whatever he is excited about, I’m excited about, too,” Emmerich told Variety. “We talked about that I have to develop my own [Web3] spaceships, etcetera, etcetera. And so there’s a possibility to buy a spaceship I designed — but it’s only one of many, many things we offer. What we also want to offer is a TV show. A TV show which shows the origin of this whole situation, because aliens came to Earth, destroyed Earth, and we had to go to space.”

Ahead of launch, Emmerich, Weber and filmmaker Martin Weisz (“The Hills Have Eyes 2”) launched a series of free animated shorts featuring “Space Nation Online” character Zoey (voiced and performance captured by actress Winona Weber), an alien teen space pirate, and her ill-fated attempts to go viral online. “Space Nation Online” lead writer Jess Lebow and Weber joined as co-writers. A spinoff of the shorts is currently in development.

“One of the things that Jerome, Tony, Roland and I wanted to make sure from the beginning is that people realize this is a very solid, long-term story that we want to develop,” Weber said. “That includes first the game, the platform we built, and that now, in the next step, will include some transmedia IPs that we want to develop so that all the users can see this is not like a fast money grab, where people try to launch a token promising a game and then they’re out. It’s quite the opposite. We’ve launched the game to the tune of a nearly $50 million investment through the management buyout and finance we raised from VCs and investors, and we still haven’t gone and launched the token or something, because we first want to stabilize the ecosystem, and that’s our main concern at this point. And we’re doing pretty well.”