One of the more intriguing new shows this year is set to debut on Starz on April 12, 2013. Da Vinci’s Demons starring Tom Riley as Leonardo da Vinci was created by David S. Goyer (screenwriter of the Dark Knight trilogy) and takes a look at the life of genius painter who left thousands of journal pages behind after his passing.
Hundreds of those pages are now available online, courtesy of the British Library. And Goyer was even given access at the British Museum to look at Da Vinci’s actual journals while doing his research for the series, noting that some of the pages he viewed had wine and food stains on them. During his research process for Da Vinci’s Demons, Goyer also discovered that 7,000 of Leonardo da Vinci’s 13,000 journal pages vanished within a year of his death.
“Accessing some of Leonardo da Vinci’s own journal pages from the British Museum’s collection was inspiring to say the least. Even in another language and often, written backwards in da Vinci’s mirror handwriting, one can feel the remarkable influence of da Vinci’s unparalleled genius,” explained Goyer. “Da Vinci’s Demons is an opportunity to delve into the gaps in history and imagine what this man may have been like and what he may have accomplished in his youth—what might have been in those 7,000 missing pages.”
The Plot: Da Vinci’s Demons is a historical fantasy following the ‘untold’ story of the world’s greatest genius during his turbulent youth in Renaissance Florence. Brilliant and passionate, the twenty-five-year-old Leonardo da Vinci 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. He begins to not only see the future but invent it.
