Two-hour science-fiction pilot
Fugitive Space
A condemned pilot. An alien prison. One impossible road home.
Created by Marc Scott Zicree, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby
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Explore the Showrunners Network campaignExpanded synopsis
A condemned pilot. An alien prison. One impossible road home.
Fanning was a military helicopter pilot until a massacre left him disgraced, convicted and certain that someone else wrote the story of his guilt. Transported with a volatile group of prisoners to Cerberon, an alien penal world, he enters a system designed to strip every inmate of identity, leverage and hope.
Cerberon is not simply a prison. It is part of a living alien infrastructure connected to Terminus, a station whose organic technologies behave more like organisms than machines. Methane skies, unfamiliar guards and a brutal labor hierarchy turn incarceration into a form of colonial extraction.
When the transfer collapses into chaos, Fanning must work with Alt, Hudgens, Lester, Dead Meat, Babyface, Sheila and Emily. Their most unexpected ally is Moonlight, a Cerberon being who communicates through moving patterns of light across the body. Escape means crossing species boundaries, surviving the Tarpinian who hunts them, and deciding whether returning to Earth is enough if the system that condemned them remains intact.
An impossible crew
A prison break becomes a first-contact odyssey.
An unlikely crew must learn to trust one another before they can find a way home.
The fugitives forced into an uneasy crew · PrevisualizationThemes
The questions driving the story
Theme
Guilt versus blame
Fanning must face what he did, what was done in his name and what justice looks like after official truth collapses.
Theme
Prison as empire
Cerberon turns bodies, labor and alien difference into resources for a system built far from public scrutiny.
Theme
Chosen loyalty
The fugitives survive only when people taught to distrust one another become a crew.
Theme
First contact from below
Moonlight makes alien communication intimate, embodied and morally urgent.
Characters
The people at the heart of the story
Fanning
A disgraced military pilot who knows the official story of his crime cannot be the whole truth.
Alt
A hardened survivor whose alliance with Moonlight changes the emotional center of the escape.
Hudgens
A guard forced to choose between the institution he served and the people it has marked disposable.
Lester
A technically gifted prisoner who can read systems and find possibilities inside alien machinery.
Dead Meat
Mits Kataoka, a fighter whose brutal nickname hides fierce loyalty and a refusal to die on command.
Babyface
Eldon, the youngest face in the group and a reminder of what the prison consumes.
Moonlight
A Cerberon whose luminous language creates a bridge between species and exposes the cost of the human system.
The Tarpinian
A relentless adversary who turns the fugitives' escape into a hunt across Terminus.
From drawing to previsualization
William Stout’s designs take shape
See William Stout’s original character and creature drawings beside their 3D previsualization counterparts.
The fugitive crew
The inhabitants of Cerberon
Original concept art
Iain McCaig designs the fugitives and alien life
Explore Iain McCaig’s original character and creature drawings.
Creative team
Writers, producers and artists
Marc Scott Zicree
Founder, writer, director and producer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
A five-decade genre storyteller, author and filmmaker who has written and produced for landmark science-fiction series while building independent worlds with audiences.
Elaine Zicree
Founder, writer, director and producer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
A filmmaker, writer, producer and actor coach who co-leads Space Command Studios and The Table, and is directing the feature When the Voiceless Roar.
Mark Fergus
Co-creator and producer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, producer and co-creator whose work pairs large-scale genre storytelling with human stakes.
Hawk Ostby
Co-creator and producer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
An Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and producer celebrated for grounded, intelligent science fiction.
Iain McCaig
Concept artist and visual designer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
A legendary concept designer and illustrator whose character and world design has shaped modern fantasy and science fiction.
William Stout
Illustrator and production designer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
An influential illustrator, designer and filmmaker with a career spanning creature design, production art and imaginative worldbuilding.
Attached performers
The actors bringing the story to life
Michael Harney
Actor
Attached to: Fugitive Space
A deeply grounded character actor known for bringing weight, vulnerability and danger to complex men.
Armin Shimerman
Actor
Attached to: Fugitive Space
A distinguished stage, screen and voice actor whose characters have become touchstones of genre television and gaming.
Photo credit
Photo by Super Festivals. Source photograph, CC BY 2.0. Source image displayed without additional cropping.
Steven Huff
Actor and fight choreographer
Attached to: Fugitive Space
An actor, martial artist, weapons specialist and fight choreographer who brings physical storytelling expertise to the screen.
Production readiness
Built to move forward
A complete pilot script, character ensemble, series direction and visual-development archive establish both the immediate escape story and the larger conspiracy beyond it.
