Trent Reznor’s 2007 concept album Year Zero is being developed as a potential sci-fi miniseries for HBO, with Reznor telling the L.A. Times that he’s been fleshing out ideas with producer Lawrence Bender, Roswell producer Kevin Kelly Brown, and Carnivale writer Daniel Knauf. For the unfamiliar, Year Zero explores America in the year 2022, renamed “Year 0” to mark the nation’s rebirth as a neo-conservative Christian theocracy, where the government is run by evangelicals and every citizen must answer to a Bureau of Morality. (Surprisingly, Reznor paints this as a bad thing; sounds like someone needs to have his honor restored.)
The album follows the efforts of underground rebel groups to undermine the new world order—particularly its habit of doping the water supply with a drug that makes everyone feel apathetic and carefree, which sounds awesome, frankly—as what may be the apocalypse approaches. Reznor has already expanded on his dystopic world vision in a sprawling alternate reality game; Knauf is said to be busy outlining that vision in his “overall world bible,” a development process that Reznor cautions is unfolding at “a glacial pace,” so don't get too excited yet. Now it's a question of which will make it onto HBO first: Trent Reznor’s Year Zero, or his hated ex-protégé Marilyn Manson on Eastbound And Down?