First, I must give thanks to mutual NIN fan Sarah Barkai for alerting me (yesterday, but my enthusiasm was derailed by the tangentially related Sally Menke news) to this mini-development concerning the Year Zero miniseries:

Trent Reznor says HBO and BBC America are moving forward with the development of “Year Zero,” the grim sci-fi epic that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG).

“We are in pre-production with HBO and BBC America to do a miniseries,” Reznor said Monday. “It’s exciting. I probably shouldn’t say too much about it except that I understand that there’s a thousand hurdles before anything shows up in your TV listing. It’s been an interesting and very educational process and it cleared the HBO hurdle a few months ago and now we’re writing drafts back and forth. So it’s very much alive and incubating at the moment.”

Upon further examination, this isn’t so much news as Reznor’s method of keeping his troops appraised (the move from “production hell” to pre-production status) as well as a further confirmation of the April 2009 “YZ is alive” (w/background info) tease. However, a very positive development is the announced involvement of producer extraordinaire Lawrence Bender, whose credits include many of Quentin Tarantino’s movies (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2, and Inglourious Basterds) as well as stuff like Good Will Hunting, The Mexican, and A Price Above Rubies. Still, the eventual arrival of “Year Zero” as an HBO miniseries could take, literally, forever.

Here’s the thing: Quite frankly, I don’t have much faith in HBO’s ability to follow through with a great television series (see “Deadwood,” which was cancelled following Season 3 with further failure to follow through with the promised 2-hour movie-format finale, simply because HBO’s money was tied up in another show) without yanking the entire shbang out from underneath unaware viewers. Hell, the recent “Boardwalk Empire” pilot episode cost $18 million to make and has been renewed through its second season already. Not that I’m complaining at all about having Steve Fuckin’ Buscemi available for my viewing pleasure, but that show’s gonna be a huge swallower of HBO’s financial resources that would, theoretically, otherwise be available for stuff like “Year Zero.”

The other big “if” here is Reznor himself, especially if HBO fucks with his vision. We’ve already seen that, when things aren’t going his way, Rez isn’t afraid to tell a corporation to shove it up their own asses and go his own way. However, freeing oneself from a record company still leaves the relatively cheap possibility of distributing music online. In contrast, telling HBO to go to hell would be remedied only by setting up one’s own cable channel (not really feasible) or starting over at square one with pitches to various networks. In other words, “Year Zero” could still tank out completely and never happen, so this shall very much remain a “let’s wait and see” sort of situation. In the meantime, Reznor fans can get their fix with free shit for The Social Network and the ongoing How To Destroy Angels project.

If you missed it, here’s the original “teaser trailer” for the Year Zero album, which features a sighting of The Presence: