Caprica Information Page

Caprica would take place more than half a century before the events that play out in Battlestar Galactica. The people of the Twelve Colonies are at peace and living in a society not unlike our own, but where high technology has changed the lives of virtually everyone for the better.

But a startling breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, one that will bring to life the age-old dream of marrying artificial intelligence with a mechanical body to create the first living robot: a Cylon. Following the lives of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas (the family of William Adama, who will one day become the commander of the Battlestar Galactica), Caprica will weave together corporate intrigue, techno-action and sexual politics into television's first science fiction family saga, the channel announced.

New York, NY March 18, 2008 -- As the Peabody and Emmy-winning original series Battlestar Galactica heads into its fourth and final season, SCI FI Channel has greenlit production on Caprica, a two-hour Battlestar backdoor pilot prequel from executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick. Production on Caprica is slated to begin in Vancouver this spring.

"We couldn't be more excited to see this long-anticipated project get off the ground. It's an amazing script, and, though clearly inspired by the Battlestar mythology, it is not just a pale spin-off. This is a smart, thought-provoking, emotional, and compelling character drama in its own right," said Mark Stern, Executive Vice President of Original Programming.

Set 50 years before Battlestar Galactica, Caprica follows two rival families the Greystones and the Adamas as they grow, compete, and thrive in the vibrant world of the 12 Colonies. Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe. Caprica will deliver all of the passion, intrigue, political backbiting, family conflict and hardcore action that always leaves Galactica fans begging for more.

"I'm thrilled with the chance to expand on the Galactica world and get deeper into the origins of the story we've been telling," said Moore. "It's also great to have a chance at doing a completely different kind of science fiction series, one that's even more character-oriented and doesn't rely on pyrotechnics to carry the story."

"While Caprica will have its own personality, it will carry on Battlestar's commitment to pushing the boundaries of the genre, and we're thrilled that SCI FI has seen fit to giving us another opportunity to tell character-driven stories in challenging ways," added Eick.

"We've assembled a true dream team to produce this exciting project," said Universal Media Studios president Katherine Pope. "Building on the brilliance of SCI FI's Battlestar Galactica, we all know Caprica will be a critical and commercial success."

Executive produced by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick (Battlestar Galactica), Caprica is co-written by Moore and Remi Aubuchon (24), and will be directed by Jeff Reiner (Friday Night Lights). Universal Media Studios will produce.

9/19/2006 -- It's in development. We've done a couple of drafts of the script and we're waiting to see if SciFi is going to give it the greenlight... It's very different from Galactica. It's not action adventure, it's planet-bound. It's about a couple of families and politics and corporate intrigue. It's about the creation of the Cylons, in essence, and it's fifty years before the events of Battlestar Galactica on the planet Caprica. It's a very different show - we didn't want to spin off the show into another war series about another Battlestar, about another group of survivors. We wanted to push the bounds of what science fiction is. No one has really tried to do the science fiction equivalent of the prime time soap. I don't know that it'll be as serialized as a prime time soap, but I'm sure there will be continuing elements. The feel of it will be different from the traditional action/adventure sci-fi show. (source: CHUD)

10/30/2006 -- It's not a war show; it's not even a space show or an action-adventure show. It's a family drama and a political drama about corporations and politics. It's almost [more] like a sci-fi soap than it is an action-adventure series... It's the story of the creation of the Cylons. We're trying to do something different within the genre and give a different flavor to the material than Battlestar Galactica does... [The story] centers around two families, one of whom owns an enormous corporation, à la Microsoft, and it builds the first Cylons; then the other family is Adama's father, who's a lawyer at the time and starts to become an opponent of what they're trying to do. (source: New York Post)

11/2006 -- It's actually a prequel, and this would be a one hour pilot not a mini-series. It takes place 50 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica and it's essentially about the creation of the Cylons. It's a very different show; it's not action-adventure and it's not even in space. It takes place on the planet Caprica and it's more of a family drama, with political and corporate intrigue. We're well into the writing of it actually; we're doing re-writes on the script right now and Sci Fi has been very happy so far. At the moment, we're just waiting to see if they greenlight it or not. Generally, there's always a two step process: there's ordering the pilot and then there's ordering the series, but because we're not designing it as a mini-series, I don't know that anybody would even see the pilot if they chose not to go to series with it... Tonally, it will be very different. This is Caprica before the fall. It's a decadent world, but also a world that's going at a very fast pace. It's a prosperous society that hasn't experienced the devastation of the first Cylon war yet, so this culture has really not been taken down a peg, and their hubris is getting the better of them. It's a go-go society that's teetering on the brink, so it's not that apocalyptic survival scenario of Galactica. The whole thing is tonally very different. (source: Dreamwatch)

2/14/2007 -- They have the script, and they've said they're very excited about it, so now we just sit and wait. (source: EOnline)

3/24/2007 - It's been in development at SciFi for a while and they haven't picked it up. And I don't know if they're going to pick it up at this point. There's talk of doing it as a TV movie and seeing how that works, as a back-door pilot, much as we did with the "Galactica" miniseries. Right now there's nothing telling me that they're going to move on it anytime soon, so I'm starting to feel that it's going to remain on the development shelf. It was a different kind of show. Instead of an action-adventure sci-fi piece, it was more of a prime-time soap, a sci-fi "Dallas." It was about a family, the Adamas, and a company, and it was about the creation of the Cylons 50 years ago. It was not going to be space-based, but set entirely on the planet of Caprica. But it would have sci-fi touches, and it would deal with issues like artificial intelligence and the various schemings and backbitings that you get in the traditional soap opera. (source: Salon)

3/26/2007 -- Still in development. They're not picking it up as a pilot right now. They've talked about doing a two-hour version of it, or a DVD. The longer it goes on, the less likely it seems that anything will happen. (source: TelevisionWeek)

3/26/2007 -- It's now back in development. They're not picking it up as a pilot at the moment. They might want to pick it up as a movie or as a DVD release. No one is saying it's over, but we're also not going forward at this moment. Right now it's on the back burner. (source: Post-Gazette)

3/26/2007 -- It's on the shelf over at Sci Fi. I don't think they're picking it up right now. They've talked about doing a similar back-door situation like they did with Galactica, where maybe they do a two-hour [movie] that's also a direct-to-DVD thing that serves as a backdoor pilot. But, personally, the longer they don't pick it up, I think the less are the odds that they will.

7/2007 -- It's not on the front burner, but I don't think anyone has told us definitely that it's dead. We continue to hope that there'll be an opportunity and a programming need for it. It's certainly an idea we wholeheartedly believe in and feel would not only capture the interest of a lot of the Galactica viewers, but also expose a whole new audience to this mythology because it's a very different type of show. (source: Starburst)

3/20/2008 -- It's a different animal altogether. Unlike those shows, which are all riffs on the same notion of what Star Trek was, Caprica is really a completely different kind of genre. We're trying to do something different... This is really more of a sci-fi Dallas. It's a political story, a family story. It's about the creation of the Cylons, and it's about a company. It's planet-based. It's very character-oriented, very serialized and very much about the characters. It's a whole different genre, and that's what makes it exciting.

5/19/2008 -- It's busy. Caprica is going. We're in pre-production. We have a director. They're starting to cast right now... It's just a pilot for now. There's no order for a series, so there's nothing to show-run. There's just a pilot to produce, and I'm one of the producers. The script has been written for two years, so there's not a lot of heavy lifting on the page... Oh, I'd given up on it. I'd frankly just given up on it. It was on the back burner. They never said definitively no. They just said, well, not now. And they kept saying, well, not now. You just give up at a certain point. And I was sure it was never going to happen. And then during the writers strike I literally read it in TV Guide that they were doing it. Somebody said, did you see the mention in TV Guide? They're talking about Caprica. I was like, OK. (source: Wired)

7/20/2008 -- 'You don't play god and then get to walk away from what you created. And that's really the story of Caprica. We're going to watch them create this [Cylon race], and then wrestle with the ramifications of it. They're not even going to realize what they've created at first... There are still going to be issues of terrorism and security and how society should protect itself or not protect itself. You know, what is the line between civil liberties and protection of the homeland? They're going to be spiraling out of certain events that happen in the pilot... You're also dealing with ethical responsibilities, with things like, what is a person? What does it mean to be a sentient being? Does that being have rights? What are you allowed to do to something that you've created out in a laboratory? Does it have a soul...

It's about a vibrant society. It's really at the height of its power and the height of its decadence at the same time. So it's really a thriving, vibrant culture that's going to come apart as we watch, but it's sort of the roller coaster. It's thrilling at the top when you see how far down you've got to go... I was particularly attracted to the idea of doing a science fiction piece that was not built on a foundation of action adventure. It wasn't about Vipers and it wasn't about the Cylons attacking every other week. It was really a character piece... The tension comes from the fact that you know where it's going. The idea is to say, 'All that you see here is doomed.' There's an ominous (tone). You know how World War II is going to turn out. You know the Nazis are going to lose. That doesn't mean you can't tell compelling stories. (source: Television Critics Association)

5/26/2006 -- [Caprica is] in the very earliest embryonic stages. We're now working on the outline with Remi Aubuchon, who's the writer. We're going to be submitting the document to the network in the next week or so... [Ron and I are] deeply involved with Caprica, and we're very enthusiastic and thrilled with the opportunity, but when it comes to the detail work of pounding out the script, there's a third partner involved who's at the helm... This time we have a partner in Remi, who's going to be taking the lead with the new project... Right now it's a script. We'll probably know if it's a pilot around July. (source: TV Guide)

7/13/2006 -- It takes place about 50 years ago. It's in the Galactica universe, only 50 years before the events of Battlestar... It is about the birth of the artificial intelligence technology that will one day lead to the Cylon race. So on that level, it deals with the Cylons. But certainly not in the same way that we deal with them on [Galactica]... The script is still being written. (source: Now Playing)

11/9/2006 -- It's definitely coming along creatively. Right now the network has a script and we are just waiting for an answer. (source: iF Magazine)

6/1/2007 -- We're certainly tremendously excited and enthused by what we were able to develop with Remi Aubuchon into a prequel launching point for a new series called Caprica, which would basically take the stories that we come to discover on Battlestar Galactica and go all the way back to their embryo, and the discovery of the technology that leads to the Cylons. It's a tremendously arresting idea that was really beautifully executed, and we're anxious for any opportunity to pursue it because we really think it's a special project... I don't think we know the definitive answer to [whether it will go forward]. I don't think anyone's said to us definitely that it's dead. (source: End of series press conference)

3/20/2008 -- Caprica is a story that Ron Moore and I concocted with Remi Aubuchon, and we're casting as we speak. I'm very excited about that. If Battlestar Galactica is Black Hawk Down, I would say that Caprica is American Beauty. Caprica is all about the inner lives of the people on a planet and how their personal relationships as well as their professional relationships inform what will become the creation of the Cylons.