News: Nightflyers' Casts Phillip Rhys In Recurring Role



Phillip Rhys has been cast in a recurring role for George R.R. Martin's sci-fi horror series Nightflyers. Rhys will play Murphy, a top systems tech engineer who is completely unnerved after discovering that an L-1 telepath is on board the Nightflyer. Rhys has previously appeared on 24, Nip/Tuck, Survivors, and Rosewood

 The series recently received €850,000 ($1.1M) from the Irish funding agency, the largest single award in the association’s latest round of funding. It will be filming at Limerick’s Troy Studios. Syfy had officially given a straight-to-series order for the series earlier this month. Universal Cable Productions will produce, with Netflix co-producing and having first-run rights outside of the U.S. 

Originally published as a science fiction short in 1980 by Analog Science Fiction and Fact, the story was turned into a 1987 film that didn't do very well at the box office. It starred '80s female lead Catherine Mary Stewart. The story sees  nine academics head into space on the ship Nightflyer, prisoners to a madman intent on killing them. Martin spoke about the series script, saying that:

“Honestly, at first I was baffled as to how they hoped to get a series out of my story, since at the end of the novella…pretty much everyone is dead (it was a horror story, after all). But in May, UCP got me a copy of Jeff Buhler's script, and I saw how he'd dealt with that. It was a good read, and yes, I came away with a better idea of where they'd find a few seasons.”  

 Mike Cahill (I Origin) will direct the pilot, and Andrew McCarthy (Orange is the New Black) will serve as a producer-director. The show also stars Gretchen Mol (Boardwalk Empire) as Dr. Agatha Matheson, Eoin Macken (The Night Shift) as Karl D’Branin, David Ajala (Fast & Furious 6) as Roy Eris, Sam Strike (EastEnders) as Thale, Maya Eshet (Teen Wolf) as Lommie, Angus Sampson (Fargo) as Rowan, Jodie Turner-Smith (The Last Ship) as Melantha Jhirl and BrĂ­an F. O’Byrne (Million Dollar Baby) as Auggie.