Destroy All Humans! Blasting Into Your TV Screen

Fox Broadcasting has acquired the rights to turn THQ's best-selling sci-fi video game Destroy All Humans! into a computer-animated comedy. It marks the first time a video game will be used as the basis for a prime time network television program.

Set in the 1950s, the third-person action game puts players into the bulbous gray head of Crypto 137, an alien who has landed on Earth and is intent on destroying it. The game takes a comic approach and spoofs '50s Hollywood B movies.
"The goal is to make the show as good and as funny as the video game," said former King of the Hill writer/coexecutive producer Jim Dauterive, who will develop the project.

He said one of the exciting things about bringing Destroy to network TV was the opportunity to forge a new space with this comedic property.

"Hopefully, if we pull this off, people will be asking why haven't we done this before," Dauterive said.

Game developer Pandemic's Australian studio created Destroy for THQ. The game has shipped more than 1 million units worldwide since it launched in June.

UPN delved into the video game waters last year with the appropriately titled Game Over from production house Carsey-Werner-Mandabach. The cartoon show, which was set in a game universe but was not based on an actual game license, failed to find an audience. In June 2003, Fox signed a first-look development deal with The Sims creator Will Wright to create original TV show concepts, but no show has yet emerged from that deal.