Starz has released the first look at Tom Riley as Leonardo Da Vinci in the new series ‘Da Vinci’s Demons‘.
The series was created by ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy scribe David S. Goyer who also wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Warner Bros. films ‘Man of Steel‘. According to the press release from the network, ‘Da Vinci Demons’ is an action adventure historical fantasy, following the ‘untold’ story of the world’s greatest genius during his turbulent youth in Renaissance Florence. Brilliant and passionate, the series follows the twenty-five year old Leonardo Da Vinci who is an artist, inventor, swordsman, lover, dreamer, and idealist. As a free thinker, with intellect and talents that are almost superhuman, he struggles to live within the confines of his own reality and time and begins to not only see the future, but invent it.
“The show is insanely ambitious in scope, schedule, action and the nature of Leonardo’s mind,” Riley says of the production. To accurately portray the Renaissance genius, Riley began to start learning to do things with his left hand to be able to accurately able to portray Da Vinci’s ambidextrous nature. “My apartment is littered with sketches in various stages of completion that I attempted with my weaker hand, as well as reams of backwards writing,” he says.
At the NYCC, Goyer described the eight episode miniseries as a “Tony Stark prototype” which Riley added, “Mixed with a bit of Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones.”
If you’re wondering about the Sherlock Holmes part, Goyer has added a little mystery to the show based on an actual historical secret society called the Sons of Mithras. “People claim that Plato and Aristotle and Socrates were all members of this mystery cult,” he explained, “a secret order that wanted to preserve and disseminate knowledge. That’s the secret society that I chose to involve him in, because I figured any club that had Socrates and Plato and Aristotle in it was probably good enough for da Vinci.”
If you’d like to read more about how production went for ‘Da Vinci Demons’, you can read all about it on Goyer’s ‘Da Vinci Demons’ production blog.
In the meantime, check out these first pics of Riley as the iconic man.
Synopsis:
In a world where thought and faith are controlled, one man fights to set knowledge free. Leonardo da Vinci is tortured by a gift of superhuman genius. He finds himself in a conflict between truth and lies, religion and reason, past and future. His aspirations are used against him by the opposing forces of the time – luring him into a game of seduction where those who despise his intellect need him most. His quest for knowledge nearly becomes his undoing. Da Vinci throws himself into his genius and emerges as an unstoppable force that lifts an entire era out of darkness and propels it into light. His story becomes a mirror into our own world, calling us all to join his fight to free the future.
