Roland Emmerich says he is developing a “3-season prestige TV series” based on the celebrated Lawrence of Arabia film that debuted in 1962. That epic movie, which was 3 hours and 42 minutes long, starred Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, and Omar Sharif under the direction of David Lean.
The script for the first season of Emmerich’s planned series would likely be written by Anthony McCarten, who penned the screenplay for Bohemian Rhapsody. The budget for the series is reportedly around $100 million.
Emmerich’s most recent project, Moonfall (2022), was described by Jordan Ruimy in World of Reel as “one of the worst films of the present decade, earning him the title of “master of disaster.” Other films he made include Universal Soldier, Godzilla, The Thirteenth Floor, 10,000 BC, 2012, Independence Day, Stonewall, and The Patriot.
Lean’s 1962 classic focused on the exploits of the British lieutenant T. E. Lawrence who was deployed to Arabia more than a century ago to enlist Arab support for the British conflict with the Turks. The film depicted a rebellious Lawrence striking out on his own, undertaking a journey by camel across the desert to attack a Turkish stronghold.
Born in Stuttgart, Germany, the 68-year-old Roland Emmerich was inspired to become a filmmaker after watching Star Wars. For his thesis film at University of Television and Film Munich, he wrote and directed The Noah’s Ark Principle, which opened the 34th Berlin International Film Festival in 1984. In the year that followed he founded what is now known as Centropolis Entertainment with his producer-sister Ute Emmerich.
Roland Emmerich’s work became known in the United States after the release on home video of Making Contact (originally known as Joey) and Ghost Chase (originally known as Hollywood-Monster. During the 1990s, he directed several films in the science-fiction and speculative-fiction genres. Emmerich’s Godzilla, released in 1996, was a box-office success though it was panned by many critics and reviewers. He also directed Stonewall, an LGBTQ-themed film based on the 1969 uprising in New York’s Greenwich Village.
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