‘The Last of Us’ Director Helming British Sci-Fi Reboot

Deadline reports that a reboot of the British cult classic sci-fi series Blake's 7 is in production with The Last of Us' director Peter Hoar at the helm.

The director has reportedly launched his own production outfit titled 'Multitude Productions' alongside Matthew Bouch (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder) and Jason Haigh-Ellery (Doctor Who: The New Audio Adventures). Blake's 7 is the first of several IP the company is looking to gain the rights to, and Hoar has positioned himself to direct the series.

Blake's 7 originally aired for four seasons on the BBC between 1978 and 1981, centering around a group of outlaws and convicts who team up against an oppressive regime with advanced weaponry and spacecrafts. The show was created by Terry Nation, who is best known for writing several classic episodes of Doctor Who.

There have been several attempts to revive Blake's 7 throughout the years, but Multitude Productions are the first to strike a lucrative deal with Nation's estate. Executive producer Lizzie Worsdell has also joined the team, following up her previous work on Amrita Acharia's The Carer.

Given the shows' shared history, comparisons between Blake's 7 and Doctor Who are inevitable. Not only was Terry Nation heavily involved with both, but they both aired on the BBC at a time when science fiction was a very risky genre to handle. And yet, Hoar views the latter as a cautionary tale.

"Something went wrong," Hoar said about Doctor Who. "I think there were lots of areas you could point fingers at but ultimately it wasn’t a better show with more money. And that’s a good thing, because we haven’t got the money anymore, nobody has."

Hoar added that the "well-publicized dropping off of Doctor Who" was a key reason for Multitude's purchase of the Blake's 7 rights in the first place. "We are looking to the international market and seeing if there is a way of dovetailing that British low-budget sensibility with international markets."

While the logistics of the Blake's 7 reboot are still being figured out, Bouch has expressed a keen interest in getting multiple writers on board rather than having a single showrunner oversee the production—like Russell T. Davies with Doctor Who.

"Russell is Russell," Bouch said, "but I think those people are relatively few and far between."