When Dean Devlin launched Electric Entertainment back in 2000, he thought it was going to be business as usual. And that business was making big-budget, sci-fi adventure movies like “Stargate” (1994) and “Independence Day” (1996). But, he says, “it became very clear very early on that life was going to be different without the 500-pound gorilla of a big, giant, successful director like Roland Emmerich,” his partner at Centropolis Entertainment. “And I don’t think I had quite anticipated that.”

But, in 2004, things took a dramatic turn for the better. Devlin got a new agent, Brian Pike, then at CAA, who suggested he take a meeting with Michael Wright, the new senior VP of programming at TNT , whose goal was to build a brand for a cable channel in what he termed the “smart popcorn spa

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