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What if aliens suddenly landed on our planet one day and then systematically set about destroying human civilization? That’s the simple, but chilling concept behind Steven Spielberg’s ominously titled Falling Skies, the new television series on TNT. Spielberg has had a lifelong fascination with aliens, of course, both the unfriendly kind (Super 8, War of the Worlds) and the cuddly (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind). But this time, he’s focused on the very unfriendly kind in a show that he conceived with writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan). Appropriately enough, the highly anticipated alien invasion drama, which he executive-produces, launched with a two-hour global premiere on June 19, debuting in more than 75 countries. And this summer and fall, the initial 10-episode series will be available in more than 180 million homes worldwide, nicely complementing the global-invasion concept.
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“It’s a great concept—and a really scary one, as the aliens are extremely intelligent and well organized,” says Wyle, who plays Tom Mason, a Boston history professor whose family has been torn apart by the invasion, and who’s returning to a TV series for the first time since leaving ER. “And the focus isn’t so much on the actual invasion and destruction, but on how people survive after it. It’s essentially a character drama. And like Lost, it opens with a question mark—why did this happen, what do they want, and how will we survive? Each week, you learn a new piece of information about the aliens and their motives.”
The actor previously worked with Spielberg on ER, which the director also executive-produced, “so we go way back,” he adds. “And Steven was very involved in every aspect of this show. He was on the set of the pilot and very hands-on with all the casting and alien designs and so on. And the aliens are amazing-looking—huge and very frightening!”
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Shooting the ambitious series was the job of Chris Faloona, a seasoned film and television cinematographer whose extensive credits include The Mentalist, Without a Trace and Melrose Place, and who was brought on by Beeman.
“We had worked on various projects together, and when he called about this, I was pretty excited,” recalls Faloona. “The first meetings were with Greg and Steven about the look of the show and where it was going to go. They had already done the pilot before Greg and I came on, and Steven discussed what he did and didn’t like about it and how we should proceed.”Faloona says that Spielberg heavily referenced Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón’s dystopian sci-fi 2006 feature shot by frequent Cuarón and Terrence Malick collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC. “Steven loved the look of that and the style, and told us that it would be a great cornerstone and palette for this,” he reports. “And that also really excited me, as Lubezki is one of my favorite DPs ever. His work is just fantastic, so we went back and really studied his films, and realized that a lot of it’s handheld. So we then decided to go that route.”
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