Comic Con: Spartacus Blood and Sand

Spartacus: Blood and Sand is the cable channel Starz’s foray into original programming. Apparently, they are tired of seeing HBO and Showtime get all the glory, and so have stepped into the ring.

The show is based on the story of Spartacus (duh), a Roman sentenced to slavery as a gladiator and end up leading a slaves’ revolt. The creator described the show as being about how a group of hard, different men come together and almost take down the Roman Empire.

Did you catch that “almost?” Spoiler alert!

Of course, if you’ve seen the movie, you know how things end for our hero. But along the way the producers have promised a lot of sex and violence, to which I say, woot!

The show is modeled on the “hyper-reality” format used by Zack Snyder in 300 and also has obvious echoes of Rome and Gladiator. But like I said, with more sex and violence.

Alright, I’ll just say it—Lucy Lawless is in it and she gets naked. So if that floats your boat, more power to you. She plays a villainess Roman citizen and her husband is played by John Hannah (the brother of Evelyn in The Mummy).

We were shown a trailer of the show during the panel, and my very initial impressions are that it looks awesome. I’m pretty sure I won’t be running out and signing up for Starz (I am sort of frugal after all), but the show will definitely be going on the top of my Netflix queue when it comes out on DVD.

Interestingly, the show will promoted through a tie-in comic book, an Ipod game, and a motion version of the comic (think Watchmen). A copy of the first comic was included in our pretty rad swag bag (along with a t-shirt and poster), and it’s pretty good.

Final thought? To quote Lucy Lawless, “it’s big fun on the small screen.”

There are mostly naked men and they fight and have sex. A lot. Sign me up! But not literally.