Silvio: Dapper Dealer of Death

Astute SUPERBLOG!! readers may have noticed something of a blogging slump lately. That's partly because I've been busy working on the script for an NBC pilot called SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH. It's conceived as a joint spin-off of The Sopranos and Heroes (proposed tagline: "From the world of Heroes comes... A new kind of hero!").

SILVIO takes places roughly 30 years in the future, in A.D. 2050, long after everybody in both the Sopranos and Heroes universes are dead. By now the title character Silvio Dante is a cyborg, travelling back and forth through history to prevent evil robots from taking over the world. He's not a very good cyborg, though. His bone marrow has been replaced by very thin aluminum, so his physician tells him to be extra careful. But of course Silvio ignores the doctor's orders and plays fast and loose with death. (In one chilling scene he drives a go-cart.)

As in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (a major influence on this project), the role of Silvio will be played by several different actors. In the framing sequence, 60-YEAR-OLD SILVIO, played by Sir Ian McKellen, is sitting in a home for senile people, telling stories nobody wants to listen to. In flashbacks we'll see Haley Joel Osment as 30-YEAR-OLD SILVIO. (Steven Van Zandt is in talks to guest-star as 53-YEAR-OLD SILVIO.)

Ravishing Renée Zellweger will play the female lead, described as "a femme fatale with a funny hat". (A projected running joke is that a lot of characters dislike the hat. This causes Sil to angrily mutter "Are you making fun of my girlfriend's hat?" before blowing them away with his cyborg weapons.)

If NBC greenlights this project, I envision it as a huge epic, running at least ten years. As the main character can travel in both time and space, there's literally nowhere the story can't go! (Episode 2 will take place on an underwater planet. Episode 3: Silvio travels to Dallas, 1963, to shoot Kennedy a few extra times. It turns out he was the man on the grassy knoll - a time paradox! Other episodes: "Silvio Helps Build the Pyramids", "Silvio vs Godzilla", etc.)

The illustration above, by professional Internet ad salesperson Mr Moko, visualizes many of the key concepts, making them easy to understand even for people who can't read. Thank you, Mr Moko!

SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH is a co-production of George Lucas, Tom Fontana, and SUPERBLOG!! Please help make SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH a huge success by sending me money.