Phantom Limbs returns to Bloody Disgusting with a look at Flatliners, an unproduced television series spinoff of Joel Schumacher’s spooky cult feature of the same name.
Released in 1990 and boasting a cast of young rising stars including Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Julia Roberts, that film focused on five medical students intentionally flirting with death in heart stopping experiments meant to allow them glimpses into the afterlife. Developed years before the 2017 reboot (sequel?), the TV series would have acted as a follow-up to the original film, expanding its world and mythology with a new cast while leaving the door open for the OG characters to return.
No stranger to Phantom Limbs, screenwriter Stephen Susco joins us to discuss the project’s origins and detail the story it would have told.
“In 1990, I was a junior in high school, and there were a bunch of movies that year that really were transformative for me,” Susco says, discussing the original Flatliners’ place in his burgeoning love for film. “Particularly in showing what the potential of genre storytelling was. I grew up doing the video store thing. I made friends with the guy in the video store who would let me rent the horror movies, which were kept under the 18+ section. A lot of them were very, very straight-ahead genre movies. But in 1990, there was Ghost, and in particular, Flatliners and Jacob’s Ladder. Movies that completely changed my life and changed my perspective on what the potential genre storytelling was.
“Particularly how you can use metaphor to get people to reframe their view of the world and not have them know about it. Or it can just be a purely entertaining experience, but then it kind of lingers and maybe it gets them to dive a little deeper in their subconscious when they’re staring at the ceiling later that night. It was one hell of a year, and Flatliners was just so, so impactful for me. But [it] was so fun too, because it just explored youth and hubris in a really sort of clever, clever way.”
Cut to the early aughts. Having worked as a screenwriter since 1996, Susco found himself in the realm of television, developing a small screen take on the ’70s Marvel Comics character Brother Voodoo with Marvel and Sci-Fi Channel (since rebranded as SyFy). Though that project ultimately went unproduced, the writer loved the idea of building out an expansive world that would continue to evolve from season to season.
Soon after, Susco found success with his screenplay for 2004’s The Grudge, director Takashi Shimizu’s massively popular remake of his earlier Japanese horror film Ju-On: The Grudge. Susco returned to write the 2006 sequel, which was filmed at Toho Studios in Tokyo. “When I came back from Japan in early 2006, I was talking to my agents about how much I enjoyed the TV experience and trying to find another one. They brought up Flatliners. They said that Sony Pictures was trying to find things in their library that could work well for television, and Flatliners had obviously come up. I just lit up instantly because that movie kind of changed my life. So I saw it as an opportunity to have the kind of fun I had with Brother Voodoo.”
Kevin Bacon as David Labraccio in ‘FLATLINERS’ (1990)
In developing his take on the material, Susco sought to look beyond the bounds of the first film and its tale of clandestine medical experiments. “It logically made sense, because what the first movie explored was essentially something new and sort of accidental. It had been stumbled upon, but it wasn’t exactly something that would be ignorable beyond that point. Obviously, to go through that experience that those doctors went through, someone’s gonna hear about it and it’s gonna raise a lot of questions, both practical and ontological, I guess you could say. So it didn’t feel like it was gonna be a forced world.
“I remember in the conversation, I was like, ‘Oh, it would make sense. Like, what if twenty years later, people have been quietly studying this and trying to figure out what it was and what caused it. Was it real? Was it not?’ And the expanding nature of technology and the ability to have a more granular look at the human brain at the moment of death and how it could all work. It almost was writing itself in terms of what the world could be, and it seemed like it would be interesting to do a kind of procedural that no one had really done before. So that it was both serialized and a procedural that – there was sort of a case-of-the-week structure to it – but that it had some things that no one had ever really done before.”
Guilt comes to life in ‘FLATLINERS’ (1990)
Susco notes that his take came together quickly, and at the perfect time for contemplative genre storytelling. “It found its own dimensions very, very quickly. I think everyone saw that right away, that there was something unique. I think we were also living in the land of Lost at the time, and there was definitely an interest in finding something that had a similar tone – had some science fiction, had some existential questions, had a lot of mystery to it, but also was very much within reach of the audience. It wasn’t indie, it wasn’t intellectually out of reach, I guess you could say. It brought everything down to a very relatable level.”
Susco developed his Flatliners with Sony and Reveille Productions (the indie TV/film company behind NBC’s The Office). Though each entity liked Susco’s detailed take, he would have to seek approval from one final producer before the project would go out for pitches. “At a certain point, they said ‘You know … you have to pitch this to Michael.’
“And I was like, ‘Michael, who?’
“They said, ‘Michael Douglas’.
“…’the Michael Douglas?!’”
Indeed, the famed Romancing the Stone/Basic Instinct actor has also been a successful film producer throughout his career, seeing such projects to the screen as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Starman and, yes, Flatliners. “I was a young screenwriter. I worked with a lot of really interesting directors, and a lot of really cool people, but certainly not someone who was as legendary as Michael Douglas was. So they set a meeting where I was going to go meet him at his hotel. He had a cabana or something at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
“I was so nervous. I got admitted to his cabana, knocked, and he opened the door in his pajamas. He was just in flannels and a T-shirt. He let me in, sat down on a chair, and then his wife comes in and just kind of lounges. Shakes my hand, and then drapes herself over him. And she’s in her pajamas. I’m just like, ‘This is wild. That’s Catherine Zeta-Jones right there.’ And they were just so sweet and kind and normal.”
The two discussed Susco’s pitch, with the producer ultimately giving the project his blessing. Susco then penned the script, which was crafted to act as both a pilot for the potential series, but possibly a standalone release as well. As the studio told Susco, “That way, we have the ability to call it Flatliners 2. If it turns out good, we can put it in theatres. If not, then we can release it on video. But that way, we also have the pilot as a script so people can really see it. They can really understand it on the page. We did a couple of drafts of it, trying to really break it down, beat by beat.”
Titled Flatliners: The Series and dated June 9th, 2008, Susco’s pilot opens on a video interview with HARRY BREWER, a nervous man in his 40s recounting his experience with a recent tragedy – an apartment building explosion which brought the entire structure down, killing a number of its tenants in the process. The interviewer, a woman named MATHÉ RIZZANA (“30s … picture Gina Torres from Serenity and Alias”) guides him through his recollections as he reveals that he was nearly a victim of the fire himself. He describes his experience, that he thought he was dying, that he was afraid…until he wasn’t.
From here, we’re introduced to ANNIE BREWER (“late 20s … picture Evangeline Lilly”), the Philadelphia E.R. doc Harry remembers as having saved his life. Harry’s flashback drops us right into the hospital tasked with taking in the numerous victims of the fire the night of the explosion. As Annie works to save the life of a little girl injured in the fire, a stabilized Harry hallucinates, seeing imagery from inside the burning building transposed onto the reality around him in his recovery room (loud spiderweb cracks running along the ceiling, walls buckling, etc.).
When the little girl dies on the operating table, her wealthy family sues the hospital for medical liability, leading Annie’s boss to temporarily suspend her while the case undergoes a review. As she whiles away this unexpected time away from work, she’s approached by DYLAN TELOUGH (“early 30s … imagine a young Dylan McDermott”), Annie’s former professor who invites his old student to join him at the secluded Burroughs Institute, a sprawling private medical research facility. There, Dylan guides Annie to an octagonal surgical suite where Mathé helps him onto a surgical table, inserts a needle into him, and pulls a metallic sheet full of sensors over his body, followed by a thermal blanket. In stark contrast to the original film’s goth-grunge setting for its leads’ experiments, the technology Dylan and Mathé employ to flatline is cutting edge.
As the script describes Annie’s growing horror, Dylan triggers his own flatline. From the pilot:
ON ANNIE: her eyes widen, as she adds it up… and sees –
— DYLAN, shivering under the blanket, raises his hand. He’s holding an electronic PLUNGER. A TRIGGER.
DYLAN
(to himself:)
It’s a good day to die…
Dylan JAMS HIS THUMB into the plunger — the electrodes on his chest FIRE THE INVERSE PULSES into his heart, his brain.
Stopping them immediately. His readings become FLATLINES.
Annie stares in shock at Dylan’s inert body.
In short order, the electric contacts surrounding Dylan’s body jolt him back to life. As he comes to, he looks to Annie. “Give you one guess why I got thrown out of Harvard.”
In a recovery room, Dylan fills Annie in on the backstory of the flatlining process, how he had initially heard the rumor of medical students at an unnamed university who sought to “explore death.” Dylan sought them out, each refusing to speak with him, until he found their leader. “And he told me what waits for us after death…”
While he isn’t named, Dylan is clearly referencing Kiefer Sutherland’s Nelson Wright from the 1990 film. Would Sutherland have eventually made an appearance in the show? Explains Susco: “We always really liked the idea of having it take place in the same world. The idea of having Kiefer become a part of Season 1 was there from the early discussions. The other cast, it was always going to be a question of ‘Do we have momentum? Are we actually making this?’ And then if we are, then we can figure out those details.
Kiefer Sutherland as Nelson Wright in ‘FLATLINERS’ (1990)
“It was funny, ‘cause I remember when I brought up Kiefer, I immediately regretted it because I was concerned about how those sorts of things can affect the development process. So we just kept it to the idea of Kiefer. Fortunately, they really liked the idea and we just sort of left it there. I didn’t say, ‘Oh, and I’m gonna make sure that I integrate all the other characters from the movie into the season.’ Because I was worried that if I did that and then it got complicated, the show wouldn’t get made.”
Dylan describes to Annie the phenomena of resuscitated patients bringing back manifestations of their guilt with them from the other side, then pitches her the idea of treating them by flatlining alongside them, in a fascinating addition Susco made to the film’s mythology. But how? As the show’s treatment describes it, everyone who dies experiences a moment described as a nearly undetectable cranial flash, “an abrupt burst lasting less than a nanosecond, in which THE ENTIRE BRAIN is lit up like a firecracker. This reading is a quantifiable scientific indication of the individual’s experience at the moment of death, which Dylan has dubbed the ‘terminal world’.” In addition to the flash, Dylan has made a startling discovery – that the cranial flash occurs not only in the person who is dying, but also to anyone in closer proximity to their body. “Like a beacon in the fog of death, a signal that represents the possibility of a connection…” This will allow Dylan and his flatliners the ability to sync with their patients and experience the torment that’s been plaguing them since their near-death experiences. Now, the flatliners can act as both observers and detectives within each patient’s Terminal World to suss out the cause of their suffering. As the treatment points out, “this is our Big Hook: now you don’t have to Flatline alone … It’s the ultimate “hybrid” show … a blend of the medical, the investigative, and the supernatural.”
The idea that every patient will have their own distinct “terminal world,” married with the show’s case-of-the-week setup, would allow the series to experiment with its visuals in each episode, a concept which would surely attract both viewers and directors looking to employ their own aesthetic within the world of the show. “I think that’s one of the coolest things,” Susco explains, “that we spent time talking about how the show would feel, the idea that you could really bring in – unlike most procedurals – a director who really sets the look and the style.
“Like what Frank Darabont did with Walking Dead. With Flatliners, because every case becomes so personalized, you’re really dealing with a liminal sort of world. It’s the kind of idea of a terminal world that you could have really fascinating directors come in and just do one-offs. Like that time when they brought Quentin Tarantino in to do ER, and it was like the wildest episode of ER ever. Every episode you could bring in a really fascinating filmmaker, and they could kind of bring their own stamp to the parts of the show that were not in the lab and the offices, the familiar stuff.”
Annie resists the offer at first, but eventually relents on one condition – that Dylan bring in JACOB FORRESTER (“20s … a scruffy, chiseled, rugged contrast to Dylan’s startling metrosexuality”), Annie’s former classmate from medical school who abruptly left before the end of his Residency Cycle. In stark contrast to the selfish Dylan, Jacob is entirely selfless, having worked for Doctors Without Borders for the last six years providing free medical services to the poorest communities in the world. Annie trusts Jacob, seeing in him the perfect variable to balance out the equation that is she and Dylan, not realizing that she is the very reason he left medical school – having been in love with her, only to be heartbroken when he realized she and Dylan were having an affair. With this trio, the team is set, complemented by Mathé, a psychologist “unusually well-steeped in the philosophical, the metaphysical, and the preternatural” who acts as Dylan’s confidant and part-time lover.
Meanwhile, Harry’s haunting continues, as he’s plagued by visions of the fire intruding into his waking life, presenting the ever-present threat of each room appearing to crumble and collapse onto him. After a trip to a psychiatrist to score meds to help alleviate his hallucinations, Harry has another major episode, imagining his car being pulled into an abyss with whispering voices and soot-covered hands chasing after him. When he overdoses on anti-psychotics, he lands on Dylan’s radar, and becomes the team’s first major experiment.
After convincing Harry’s skeptical father, the trio are permitted to transport their new patient into the facility. There, they sync with Harry and flatline into his terminal world, finding themselves in the same crumbling basement of the collapsed building that haunts him. The three find Harry inside of the world, diligently chipping away at the basement floor to better hear the voices coming from below. Once their trip is complete, Dylan retreats to his mansion, leaving Annie, Jacob and Mathé to use what info they’ve gleaned from Harry’s terminal world to examine the real site of the collapsed building. After finding the actual screwdriver in the rubble, Annie and Jacob hallucinate that debris is falling down all around them, leading the two to realize that they’ve contracted Harry’s “infection” from his terminal world. Dylan later confirms this for them, their not-so-fearless leader explaining that ”his sickness is our sickness — we save him, we save ourselves.”
As Susco describes it, the most attractive aspect of the setup was how it moved beyond the conventions of most cop/lawyer/doctor procedurals. “At the end of every episode [of those shows], you either win or lose the case. You either save or fail the patient. You either catch the criminal or don’t with this kind of show. [With Flatliners], the doctor is not immune to the success or failure of each patient. They have to kind of partner with the patient in a way that they become infected with the same illness. That immediately means that if they fail the patient – they’re dead, too. It was such a wild idea, I thought.”
With the stakes raised and their own lives on the line, the Flatliners dive back into the investigation when it’s revealed that the screwdriver Harry was fixated on is now implicating him in a crime. Or, rather, the rust on its tip implicates him, matching the corrosion on the gas line responsible for the blast that took the building down. With Harry now seen as a murder suspect, Annie believes it may have been a case of attempted suicide, and insists on flatlining with him one more time to reach him directly. She and Jacob go under, with Dylan and Mathé watching over them. Time runs out, with Jacob coming out of his state quickly, while Annie stays under to seek out Harry and get to the bottom of his haunting, for the sake of he and her friends.
When she reaches him, he tells her he was trying to “stop it,” but didn’t make it in time. She puts the various pieces together, realizing that the deaths weren’t Harry’s fault, but that of his father – the building’s landlord, who had attempted to set fire to the building and reap the insurance money that would result. She convinces Harry to accept that truth, and forgive himself for failing to save them. At peace now, Harry reaches into the hole he’d gouged into the basement floor, pulling forth the souls trapped there by the collapsed building. Annie bears witness as “the SURVIVORS’ FORMS BRIGHTEN like the dying gasp of a lightbulb filament… Then THEY’RE GONE. So is Harry. Annie is alone once more.”
Back in the real world, the team races to bring an unresponsive Annie back to life after her long trip. After three minutes of compressions with no sign of life, Jacob refuses to let her go, sliding an epinephrine syringe into her heart and continuing to work with her. She finally resuscitates, whispering something to him. When Dylan asks what it was, Jacob responds – “She said it wasn’t such a good day to die, after all.”
Harry’s father is arrested in the fallout, it having been determined that while he attempted to set a small fire for the insurance money, he never dreamed of the losses that would occur. With Harry’s haunting resolved, the Flatliners have been relieved of his affliction. Annie is eventually summoned to meet with the head of the institute, AIDAN BURROUGHS (“60s … CHRIS SARANDON”). He reveals to her that he has Lou Gehrig’s Disease, an affliction that led the fantastically wealthy Burroughs to sink his entire fortune into the institute to treat the ill, never charging a patient so much as a penny for their treatment. He welcomes her to their team, noting that he has “spent most of my days in the company of devils, Ms. Hughes. And now I want to surround myself with angels.” Susco’s treatment points out that while Burroughs’ facility is outwardly altruistic, he’s hoping the work that results could possibly help prolong his life.
As the pilot ends, Dylan finds himself suffering from a haunting that he’s kept from the rest of his team, as Annie and Jacob prepare to help their newest charge with their own personal demons. Susco’s treatment outlining the show’s rule and the possibilities for its future details a handful of potential episodes that could have followed the pilot, including: “Buddy,” a horror-centric tale in which a powerful businessman is being haunted (and hunted) by a vicious wild animal that may have ties to a childhood tragedy in his past, and which poses a very real threat to our heroes; “Two Roads Diverge in a Wood,” a contemplative episode wherein the Flatliners jump into the mind of a patient suffering from split personality disorder, only to find an entirely different person living inside of patient’s terminal world; the mythology-heavy ep “White Door,” which pays off a recurring image throughout the episodes – that of a white door that appears in each patient’s terminal world in various ways, connecting everyone in death, revealing that “while each person’s death is an island, they might all be islands IN THE SAME OCEAN. We are all connected in death as well as life – but to what end, and for what purpose?”
The white door mythology is revisited with “Lightning,” in which a man who has been struck by lightning three times in the five years since his own near-death experience reveals that he saw the white door in his terminal world, and opened it. Because he could not remember anything beyond that moment, he sought out a hypnotist to help draw out the memories of that event. Whatever surfaced during that meeting drove the hypnotist mad, his hair turning shock white in the process. By this episode’s end, another piece of the mythology would be put in place, that of the “Threshold Guardian,” a being whose role is to prevent those experiencing near-death events from peering into what lies beyond. Yet another episode, “Cabal,” would introduce the idea of “Sleepers” into the Flatliners world, people aware of the flatlining phenomena who are carrying out their own similar experiments, “albeit with a much more reckless regard for human life, and with a much darker purpose in mind.”
The first season would culminate with the flatlining experiments being revealed to the world, resulting in a government official being placed in an oversight position at the Burroughs Institute. The treatment closes with the promise that “all the experiences of the Flatlining team will begin to point us towards a larger reveal in the distance – that Death may very well be the ultimate battleground for not just each individual human soul, but also HUMANITY ITSELF… and that each one of us has the capability to tilt the balance.”
“What made [the first film] work in the first place was that it was very scary, but it was very optimistic in a weird sort of way,” Susco says. “It was very humanistic. It kind of sidestepped the question of theism, which is obviously perpetually divisive, and just focused on ontological viewpoints.
“The idea is actually more Eastern than Western. You know that we are responsible for the people around us and the things that we do have very long and steady impacts that perhaps transcend our own lives. Where our lives end and possibly re-begin, you know what I mean? It’s just a compelling idea.”
Susco points out that while Flatliners is surely a horror tale, there’s a great deal going on under the surface beyond the scares. “To just focus almost entirely on the horror elements and not to focus on the wonder of it … there’s so much wonder in that idea, that there’s always a possible redemption. That yes, you’re going to face these things, but instead of facing them as a punitive aspect, there’s a hopefulness that in resolving them, you can somehow redeem yourself. You can ascend somehow. There’s an existential component that I always thought was ultimately very optimistic.
David (Kevin Bacon) pursues Rachel (Julia Roberts) in ‘FLATLINERS’ (1990)
“We’re afraid of all sorts of things in life. But fear is the primal response. The elevated response is – is that fear representing something else? If fear represents not wanting to face the misdeeds that we’ve done, that we’ve tried to ignore the rest of our lives, that’s a very good fear. That’s a fear that’s worthy.”
While the film only had a brief running time to touch on these larger questions, a series could take its time and really delve into the possibilities suggested by its premise. “It would be really cool to have hours and hours to really plumb deeper into that and not be kind of relegated to having to fit into a specifically horror niche, but expand it beyond into a wider genre aperture.
“That’s one of the reasons I think this show still really has potential, if there’s ever a chance. It still will feel very, very modern, and it can still have a very unique place among TV that’s either gone completely serialized, or remaining very defiantly case-of-the-week episodic. Within the genre space, it seems like it could still be pretty vital. That’s why I’ll always be shaking this tree, hoping that the fruit falls from it at some point, ’cause I think it could still be pretty awesome.”
So! Great concept, cult IP, successful screenwriter, powerful producer. A winning recipe, surely.
So why didn’t Flatliners: The Series happen? Especially given the completed script and full overview of the series in hand, one would be forgiven for thinking the greenlight had been close at hand for this particular project. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. “It didn’t get that close,” Susco admits. “I never really got a conclusive answer. It just sort of became, ‘We’re gonna reconceive it as a movie,’ which is why I think Kiefer was in the remake.”
Kiefer Sutherland as Nelson Wright (probably) in ‘FLATLINERS’ (2017)
Ah, the remake. Penned by Source Code’s Ben Ripley and helmed by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo director Niels Orden Oplev, the 2017 film essentially retold the events of the original film, albeit with new characters in a modern setting. However, Kiefer Sutherland does make an extended cameo as a doctor who may be his character from the original film. Remake? Sequel? Remaquel? Whatever its standing within the franchise, the effort proved to be a critical and commercial failure.
“I remember, when they first announced the movie, my name was attached to it,” Susco recalls. “But obviously, I hadn’t written the feature. So when they first announced it, I said, ‘Oh, are you doing the backdoor pilot thing? Like, are you gonna just make this as a movie?’ So I don’t know if that was something that was originally an option. I didn’t know if they were just gonna make that into a feature. Then I found out they brought on new writers and they kind of started over, but then I heard that Kiefer Sutherland was gonna be in it. So there was a lot of ambiguity for a while. I didn’t even know if I was gonna get credited or not. So, you know, at a certain point the curtain closes and you don’t have any more insight, then you just watch what comes out the other side.”
Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Elliot Page, Diego Luna and Kiersey Clemons in ‘FLATLINERS’ (2017)
Even with the remake’s underperformance looming over any potential Flatliners project in the future, one wonders if the franchise might yet get shocked back to life some day. Susco remains optimistic. “A studio or a network will say, ‘Hey, we’re looking to breathe life into…’ It’s like what happened with Flatliners. They were reaching out to people in the horror community because they know we have a lot of love for Flatliners. I don’t think a week goes by where one of my reps doesn’t e-mail me and say, ‘Hey, do you want to do Don’t Answer the Phone or Cujo…”’ Because they’re always floating out IP and remakes and reboots. Because they just prefer pre-awareness. Especially on the feature side, because it costs them so much money to market a movie than it does to make one. We can creatively chide them for leaning into IP, but from a practical sense, you at least understand it. That doing something new is far riskier for them than doing something that’s known.”
So what are the chances that Susco’s take could still be rewritten or reworked? If it was, would it account for the remake in its continuity? “I think all things are possible. I mean, anytime you have something that doesn’t land with a big splash, that just becomes an argument not to do it from the studio or the network side. So it’s possible that you say ‘Flatliners’, and someone goes, ‘Oh, that movie. Well, I mean, it didn’t really do huge business,” and then they forget that the first movie did massive business and was very culturally impactful.
“But it’s also possible that with the right kind of moment of introspection and presentation, and perhaps the right filmmaker coming in and really conveying a vision, that life could be breathed back into it. Particularly in the world where networks and studios generally really rely on pre-awareness. You know, everyone’s still mining their libraries. You gotta find a passionate executive who loves the story.
“I know Michael’s still really passionate about it. I checked in with him about it last month … just to kind of see what the status was and see if there was still interest in the TV space, because it still strikes me as a show that could resonate and play really well with modern audiences as a sort of existentially-oriented procedural. It’s more a question of, ‘Would Sony/Columbia want to do it?’”
In summing up this look back at Flatliners, Susco says that it’s “one of my favorite projects I’ve ever worked on. I only regret that we weren’t able to make it, and I hope that someday we can.”
Special Thanks to Stephen Susco for his time and insights.
Dig Phantom Limbs? Check out the book! Phantom Limbs: Dissecting Horror’s Lost Sequels and Remakes by Jason Jenkins.
This has been Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which takes a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we chat with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.
The post ‘Flatliners: The Series’ – Writer Stephen Susco Reveals All About the TV Series That Never Was [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
