At the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour this week, the producers of Syfy’s upcoming TV version of 12 Monkeys spoke about what to expect from this new interpretation of the story presented in the Terry Gilliam film.

Aaron Stanford as Cole in 12 Monkeys.

(L-R) 12 Monkeys' Travis Fickett, Co-Executive Producer; Terry Matalas, Co-Executive Producer; Noah Bean, Amanda Schull, Aaron Stanford, Natalie Chaidez, Executive Producer/Showrunner; Kirk Acevedo, Richard Suckle, Executive Producer.

Amanda Schull as Cassandra Railly and Aaron Stanford as James Cole in 12 Monkeys.

Kirk Acevedo as Ramse and Aaron Stanford as James Cole in 12 Monkeys.

The set-up is the same, as a man named Cole (Nikita and X2’s Aaron Stanford) travels from the future to try to stop the outbreak of a horrific plague that has nearly wiped out humanity. Several characters share the same last names as those in the films, but the story then branches out in different ways.Co-Executive producer/writer Terry Matalas explained, “I think it’s a complete sort of reimagining. We were all very, very big fans of the original film and had a deep love and respect for that material. So when we came together with [EP] Richard [Suckle] and talked about this, we didn’t want to just re-do what the movie does. We changed the rules in the movie. [In the movie] you can’t actually change time, and here you can. So everything from the top down changed, from Cole’s character to Dr. Railly’s character [played by Amanda Schull] to some new characters, Ramse [played by Kirk Acevedo] and Aaron [played by Noah Bean]. So the story, while it has a lot of the same themes, it’s very different.” As Matalas’ writing partner – and former IGN staff member – Travis Fickett put it, “It wouldn’t make sense to tell the same story again.”Matalas said that when they first spoke to Suckle about the project, "It wasn’t really something we took lightly, because we were such diehard fans [of the film]." He described it as, "a perfect movie, and it’s a perfect puzzle piece, and it’s one of my favorite films of all time."However, "As we started talking with Richard and further along with Natalie [Chaidez], we felt that where we were going was very different. We really wanted to do a really serialized time travel show. It was about five years ago. It’s been a very difficult show to get off the ground because I think a lot of people were afraid of time travel because people don’t understand it. But we collectively felt that audiences were ready for that. They’ve been trained on Back to the Future and a season of Lost. We just felt it was great to really embrace time travel, and we’re not pulling any punches with the time travel."In the film, the question of whether Cole was a true time traveler had some ambiguity, but the in the TV series, it’s made clear from the get go he is truly from the future. Asked about doing this, rather than suggesting perhaps he could be “an insane person,” Fickett replied, “[Let me] clarify one thing. He is a time traveller, but we’re not saying he’s not an insane person. I think that’s one thing that’s sort of open for the series.”Explained Matalas, “It would be pretty hard because we were following his point of view, and even in the original film some of the things we were seeing, it could have been suggested that it was part of his imagination, part of his psychosis, but we felt for the drive of really making this a thriller that the audience would identify more with Cole if we knew it was real.”The exact mechanics of how time travel works varies in the many stories on the subject and can sometimes be difficult to explain. Executive producer/showrunner Natalie Chaidez (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, In Plain Sight) laughed, noting in the writers room there have been, “So many hours of time travel arguments. You guys can’t believe it."Fickett had mentioned a scene in the film involving World War I and Chaidez said they did indeed plan to have the show involve more time periods than simply the future Cole is from and the present. “We have so many exciting episodes. The exciting thing about doing a time travel show is you have the freedom to jump to, let’s say, another decade, another period. We will go to many different time periods. I don’t want to spoil it. Some of them may or may not be mentioned in the pilot. But we definitely will travel around and go all the places that a time travel show can take you.”When it came to Cole’s journeys, Fickett noted, “He won’t always go on purpose.”Noted executive producer Richard Suckle, who also worked on the film, “Cole himself is, in part, the time machine, molecularly, and that’s something that you may not have necessarily gotten a full glimpse at, although I think it’s suggested in our pilot. That’s something that really is going to allow us to play with a lot of different ideas and new things where it affects him. It affects his body. It affects him molecularly. He is a part of the time machine as much as the physical instrument that you see in the pilot. That was something that Terry and Travis created, and I really was drawn to that, just to give you one example of something that was David and Janet [Peoples] wrote [for the film].”Added Matalas, “Something that we’ve always loved about the original film, was the fact that they’re not good at the time travel, and that’s something we’re going to continue throughout the series. This is very much the Apollo program. It’s dangerous. It’s untested. They don’t know exactly what they’re doing, but to save the world with the time machine you have, not the one you want have to.”Fickett and Matalas wrote for Nikita for that show’s final two seasons, and the cast includes not only Nikita alum Stanford but Noah Bean, another Nikita series regular, and Amanda Schull (Suits), who guest starred on Nikita. The show will also film in Toronto, where Nikita was produced, using many Nikita alum among the crew. Fickett and Matalas said that simply came about because of their positive experience working with the same people before.Fickett recalled how after Syfy bought 12 Monkeys, “I was writing a scene for Aaron [for Nikita], sitting next to him on set, and his voice just sort of entered the [12 Monkeys] character, so I don’t know if I did it on purpose, but we ended up writing it for him, and we knew how great he was as [Nikita’s] Birkhoff, and that was something we were always trying to write that episode, the Birkhoff episode.”Said Matalas, “We would always fight over writing for Aaron Stanford.”

12 Monkeys debuts in January on Syfy.Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman