The Building: What is Neil Gaiman's new TV series about?

Author of The Sandman and American Gods to produce sci-fi show exploring parallel dimensions

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(Image credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly)

Best-selling fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is developing a new television project called The Building.

The 20th Century Fox production is based on a 2015 digital film called Parallels, which was written and directed by Chris Leone and screened on Netflix. It follows a brother and sister travelling through a portal in a mysterious building as they search across parallel Earths for their family.

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The Building returns to the theme of inter-dimensional travel and follows a group of "young urban workers" in a building that shifts into alternate realities, says Deadline Hollywood. One of those realities includes "a Ronald Reagan-less USA that was bombed by Russia".

The workers must try to stick together to avoid being left behind as the building moves to different space-time dimensions. But each shift takes them to another Earth and seemingly further from home.

The show will also explore the origin of the building, the lives of the people in it and how the group can return to their original reality.

Deadline says The Building aims to continue Fox's tradition in the sci-fi/fantasy genre after shows such as Gotham, The X-Files and Sleepy Hollow.

It will be written by Albert Kim along with Parallels writer and director Leone. The pair will also act as producers alongside Gaiman.

At the moment, there is no information about who will be cast or if key characters from the original film, such as brother and sister Ronan and Beatrix Carver (Mark Hapka and Jessica Rothe) will reappear.