So same world, but different characters and
different stories?
Yes.
Will there still be Cylons in this iteration?
Yes!
How will technology be a part of this new version
of Battlestar?
That’s the trick, with what has changed from
the early 2000s to now that might make opening
up the world of Battlestar relevant in a different
context. We’re talking about technology and the
way it’s grown in the past 20 years, but also AI and
the effects it’s had on our society—and the effects
that it may have in the near future. That, to me, is
probably the biggest imprint on our conversations
about how we want to re-approach Battlestar.
Tech has been intertwined with your life from
the very beginning. As a kid, you came up with
ideas for software but didn’t have the patience to
actually write that code out. What were your best
ideas from back then?
Well, I had a failed internet startup, which I
thought was a brilliant idea back then! In the late
’90s, if you recall, AOL was the company. It was
bigger than Apple and it was definitely the company
to beat—in the internet space, at least. And I thought
the key to AOL’s success was that dialer. Back in
the dial-up days, I remember it being so easy to use:
You just launched the AOL software, you clicked log
in and it dialed in and it told you your email. It had
your buddy list and you had your web browser within
there, and it was all kind of all in one.
So I decided, I’m going to develop that
software and license it to the other ISPs that
were competing with AOL at the time, which were
EarthLink and MindSpring, even AT&T. [Laughs]
Of course, I didn’t realize that by the early 2000s,
broadband would essentially make dial-up a null-
and-void, moot point. My idea went away—and, of
course, AOL sort of went away, too.
If that era hadn’t gone bust, do you think you
would have stayed in the tech space and never made
your way to Hollywood?
I don’t remember who said this, but I never
wanted to make movies for money. I wanted to make
money so I could make movies. I always remembered
that even if I had this internet idea or this tech idea or
coded something I could sell, it was always so that
I could actually make movies for a living. Because
I’ve wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 8. Movies
just happened to be a very expensive paintbrush, and
you need money—at least at the time you did; maybe
nowadays it’s gotten a little cheaper. It was always
going to be a daunting task to break into the industry.
So for me, the goal of anything I was doing in my
20s with tech was always just to finance my future
endeavors in the film industry.
A lot of your projects, including Battlestar, have
involved what enthralls you—and also maybe what
scares you—about tech. How has that become such a
major part of your work so far?
I’ve tried to psychoanalyze myself. There’s
always been this fascination with tech that I’ve had
since I was 5 or 6 and I got my hands on my first
Commodore. I’ve always been fascinated by the
power it has. Maybe in the beginning it was just
viewed as this tool that a person can use, but as we
started to get into the years of the internet—well,
the public internet through schools—I started torealize that anything that powerful, especially a tool
like that, in the hands of so many people, could be
quite dangerous. For whatever reason, it was always
presented in this comical way. I remember when I saw
[the 1983 Matthew Broderick film] WarGames as a
little kid, thinking, That’s horrifying! I know the movie
was successful and everybody loved it, but they didn’t
take it seriously. People thought that was fantasy.
Later, when Terminator came out, there were evil
robots, and that’s what AI turned into. But to me,
the horrifying thing is they’re not going to need killer
robots with guns to annihilate us. The horrifying
part is way more insidious than that. What intrigued
me was that as technology exponentially grew, it
became more and more of a blind spot. I still think
it’s more of a blind spot than people let on.
You’re also working on several other projects
through your Esmail Corp production company,
which has the first website I’ve encountered where
you have to scroll up, and not scroll down, to
explore more of the site.
I’m never easy when it comes to anything that
we do at the company. I think anybody who works
at Esmail Corp can probably attest to that. Like
you said, the thought of putting up a website is
pretty straightforward: You put up your projects,
you put up the press. For me, I always took it as a
storytelling opportunity. We’re supposed to be a
production company that specializes in how we’re
going to tell stories, no matter what the platform is.
So even if the platform is a web page and we are just
telling the story of our company, what is the most
creative and inspiring way to do that? I’ve got to give
credit mostly to our website designer, Devona, who
essentially came up with this idea. I gave them some
direction, but they took it and ran with it.At the end of [Mr.] Robot, they had pitched:
What happens at the end of Robot? What happens
with the building of the entire website? We have
a tall skyscraper that was modeled after E Corp
[the evil conglomerate featured in the series]. Now
that the show is over, what happens if that building
crashes and burns? And over time, as we get closer
to the Briarpatch premiere, [what if] the hotel from
Briarpatch builds back up again? We tell the stories
in a vertical way where if you keep going up through
the sky and up to space, you end up right back into
hell—which is back at the bottom, back at the [start
of] the website. I thought that was a really creative
way to display a production company.
You’re doing a scripted podcast for UCP Audio.
Beyond that and the other TV projects, are there other
areas you want to branch into with Esmail Corp?
Essentially, any platform where we can tell
stories in an interesting way, we are exploring. Look
at Mr. Robot. After the first season, someone came
to us about potentially doing a VR film for the show.
Whenever these marketing opportunities came up
for the show we were excited, but at the same time,
we didn’t want to use them as simply marketing
opportunities. We thought that could be another way
to tell a story within that world, which we couldn’t
tell in the television show. So we did the VR film and
then we also did this book that was Elliot’s book
from Season 2, his journal while he was in prison.
We’re very excited about the podcasts, but with
new media, I can’t even sit here and predict what other
platforms and formats are coming out, and playing
with time and interactive media and how all those
things will come out. It will all depend on the story
you’re trying to tell, and that again should be first and
foremost. We’re just going in every arena possible.‘Any platform wwheere we can ttell stoories inn an interestingg way, wwe are expplooriing.’
YOU’VE GOT ESMAIL
HOMECOMING
The upcoming
Season 2 of the
Amazon series
will feature some
new actors (with
Janelle Monáe
stepping in for
Julia Roberts).
Esmail has
passed the
director baton
to Kyle Patrick
Alvarez but
remains on board
as an executive
producer.BRIARPATCH
He’s executive
producing the
USA anthology
series, starring
Rosario Dawson.ANGELYNE
His wife, Emmy Rossum, stars in this Peacock
miniseries, executive produced by Esmail, about
the mysterious woman who became famous
by appearing on L.A. billboards for decades.GASLIT
Esmail will reteam with Homecoming star Julia
Roberts for this series, also starring Sean Penn,
that is based on the Slate podcast Slow Burn
and features untold stories from Watergate.THE END UP
Esmail Corp is
producing its
first scripted
podcast, starring
Lakeith Stanfield.METROPOLIS
He’s working
on a miniseries
adaptation of the
1927 sci-fi classic
from Fritz Lang.ES
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MR. ROBOT MIGHT BE FINISHED, BUT ESMAIL’S TO-DO LIS T JUS T KEEPS GE T TING LONGER. HERE ARE SOME
OF THE BIGGES T PROJEC TS HE’S WORKING ON VIA HIS ESMAIL CORP PRODUC TION COMPANY: