Currently everywhere promoting the upcoming Star Trek Beyond, Zachary “Spock” Quinto somehow has also had time to plot his return to TV. He’ll be starring in and executive-producing a “science-fact” drama based on the book Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life.
Image: AP Photo/Rob Griffith
According to Deadline, Quinto will play a scientist trying to change the world for the better through some unusual tactics:
Biopunk chronicles the underground world of bio-hackers — DIY garage scientists seeking to do for biotech what Steve Jobs did for personal computing. These are young and hungry guerrilla scientists committed to democratizing DNA the way the internet did for information, with the ambition to build never-before-seen organisms that could solve the thorniest challenges in food, health, energy, and environmental protection. Bill Gates recently told Wired that if he were a teenager today, he would be hacking biology. “If you want to change the world in some big way,” Gates said, “that’s where you should start — biological molecules.” Quinto will play the iconoclastic leader of this movement who can’t wait for the future to get here fast enough.
Before he became Spock, of course, Quinto got his big break playing the villain on Heroes; he also appeared on multiple seasons of American Horror Story. Of Biopunk, he tells Deadline, “Having spent some time in my career exploring the landscape of science-fiction — it is a particularly exciting step to delve into a world of science-fact.” The series was created and written by Chase Palmer (who penned the new It adaptation), and will soon be shopped to networks.