We have played host to Tudors, Vikings, knights of the Round Table and warriors from Westeros and Essos. But the next characters to feature in a blockbuster TV series from Ireland could be the Romans.
The Last Barbarian, a big budget TV drama, will be directed by Jim Sheridan, the Oscar-nominated director of In America and In the Name of the Father. It will be written by Frank Spotnitz, executive producer and writer on The X-Files, who also wrote The Man in the High Castle for Amazon Studios last year.
The series has been in development for several years but has now moved a step closer to production following “critical” conversations with an international broadcaster and development funding from the Irish Film Board.
The Last Barbarian is based on the life of Hermann, a Germanic tribesman brought up in Rome as Arminius, who became a Roman citizen and military commander, but betrayed Varus, his general, by leading the tribal alliance that destroyed his three legions in Germany in 9AD.
The series is produced by Shinawil, the company responsible for The Voice of Ireland and Home of the Year.
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The idea for the series came from Alan Gillespie, head of development. Larry Bass, its chief executive, said the series would be made on a similar scale to Vikings and Game of Thrones, which each have series budgets of €30m to €50m. “Arminius was a real life character who was taken as a child slave from a Germanic tribal leader and raised as a Roman. He rises up to become leader of the Roman guard and has a multitude of adventures along the way,” said Bass.
“We started developing drama projects in the company a couple of years ago. We’re looking to develop projects that have a big broad international appeal; an epic historical drama that has a cast of really interesting characters and fantastic storylines that interweave and mirror life today.”
The film board has given development funding worth €50,000 to the project, which it classified as an international television drama. Bass said they were at a critical stage in discussions with a significant international network but that he couldn’t go into details until the deal was confirmed.
The project has been developed as a potentially long-running series over many seasons. Bass hopes filming can be in Ireland but that depended on economic and external factors. “We’re an Irish company and Ireland is in a fantastic position of being one of the better places in the world to shoot drama but these things will come down to timing and availability of spaces. Space is at a premium in Ireland these days,” he said.