Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski, whose TV work includes “The Real Ghostbusters,” “Babylon 5,” “Jeremiah” and Netflix’s upcoming mind-link sci-fi series “Sense8,” has been tapped to script Spike’s “Red Mars” pilot based on the Hugo-winning Kim Stanley Robinson series of novels Hugo-winning Kim Stanley Robinson novel about the terraforming and colonization of Earth’s second-closest neighboring planet.
Straczynski, who wrote for animated series like “He-Man,” “She-Ra” and “Captain Power” in the 1980s, has more recently co-written screenplays for “Ninja Assassin” and “Underworld Awakening.” He also scripted Clint Eastwood’s 2008 big-screen drama “Changeling.”
In 2012, he developed an ABC project about a pandemic, but it never got beyond the script stage.