King and Castle

When Chris Carter, creator of the sci-fi classic The X-Files, was planning the upcoming series reboot, he was hoping to work with his former colleague Frank Spotnitz. Unfortunately, their schedules did not coincide.

It’s an indication of Spotnitz’s rising stardom. Since Mulder and Scully’s episodic adventures ceased in 2002, he’s been on a prodigious roll. He founded London-based Big Light Productions, and under that shingle he’s now an executive producer of Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, which will debut all ten episodes of season one on November 20.

Since The X-Files, Spotnitz has been a go-to guy for a slew of action-oriented projects, executive-producing ABC’s 2005 revival of the cult ‘70s horror show, Night Stalker, as well as Cinemax/Sky’s Strike Back, BBC/Cinemax’s Hunted and TNT’s Transporter.

Speaking from his adopted home in Paris, Spotnitz says his interest in action fare started early: “I watched way, way too much television as a child.” His favorite series back then were Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Mission: Impossible and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

“These were the shows that I watched over and over again, and they’re burned into my subconscious brain. I think that’s why when I started at The X-Files, I was at home, even though I was so inexperienced.”

In fact, Spotnitz came to Hollywood as a decidedly late bloomer, having spent a decade as a journalist, first for UPI stateside, then for the Associated Press in Paris (beginning a love affair with the City of Lights that led to his eventual return).

By the time he landed in L.A. as a freelancer for Entertainment Weekly, he’d enrolled at the American Film Institute. While there, he was part of a book group that included Carter, whom he contacted years later on behalf of a screenwriter friend hoping to pitch some story ideas.

Carter demurred, instead asking Spotnitz if he had any of his own scripts; he eventually offered the journalist a staff job as a producer. Spotnitz went on to write 44 episodes of the show (only Carter wrote more) and, by season five, had ascended to executive producer.

When X-Files ended, he helped Carter produce his subsequent Fox series, Millennium and The Lone Gunmen, and partnered with Michael Mann on Robbery Homicide Division for CBS.

“Frank’s central contribution, among his many roles, was sitting with the writers and working out their stories,” Carter recalls of the X-Files days. “He helped to shape the talent and careers of many people who are now working high up in the business.”

Speaking to his former colleague’s innate abilities, Carter says, “He has a natural sense of story, good taste and a finely tuned bullshit detector.”

With Man in the High Castle, Spotnitz has his greatest challenge yet. Based on a Phillip K. Dick novel, the series imagines an America, circa 1962, that has lost World War II and lives under the control of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

“Creatively, it’s a lot to wrap your mind around,” he acknowledges, “and in production terms, it’s incredibly ambitious and expensive.”

Spotnitz came to High Castle after discussing it with Ridley Scott and David Zucker of Scott Free Productions, who had been developing it for the BBC, but passed. It was then shopped to numerous U.S. outlets, including Syfy, to no avail.

Then Spotnitz got a call from former ABC Studios exec Morgan Wandell, who’d joined Amazon as head of its drama division. As a new, deep-pocketed player looking to make a splash, Amazon turned out to be the right company at the right time.

All Spotnitz had to do now was make the show, which required creating a world that’s alien and yet familiar, grounded in a geographical verisimilitude yet dependent on state-of-the-art CGI.

“It’s a period show,” he says, “but it’s a period that never existed. You’ve got to make it feel like the past, like 1962, but not our past. Both things have to resonate, which is a balancing act.”

He found inspiration in another otherworldly cinematic wonder: “I had Star Wars in my head. I knew that we would have to construct visually and every other way — socially, culturally, politically — everything about this world, and make sure it’s right, because we’ll have to live with those decisions for the rest of the series.”

The decisions were many. “You start to think, ‘What do the streets look like? What kind of cars are on the road? What would the signs in Times Square be?’” he recounts. “It wouldn’t have been a corporate capitalist society — it would have been much more state-controlled.”

Not surprisingly, location scouting was a headache. “An awful lot of locations wanted nothing to do with us,” Spotnitz recalls. “When you tell people you’re going to hang a swastika on their building, they’re not pleased.”

The result — ultimately photographed in Seattle and Vancouver — is head-spinning and grimly compelling television. While viewers may be surprised by its premise, High Castle was the most-streamed and highest-rated pilot that Amazon premiered in January.

For Zucker, it’s exactly what he expected from Spotnitz. “I couldn’t imagine a writer-producer more perfectly suited for this.”

Spotnitz himself is excited about what comes next. As for that X-Files gig that didn’t happen this time, the chagrined writer-producer wanted to leave matters on a good note. “I did say [to Chris], ‘If you want my help, I’ll do anything. Just let me know. You don’t even have to pay me.’”

Well, let’s not get crazy….