Trent Reznor's 'Year Zero' may be an HBO series

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been in talks in with HBO about making a two-season maxi-series out of "Year Zero," the dark future tale that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with the same title that was created by 42 Entertainment.

"It's the most exciting thing on the horizon, it's the thing that when I wake up in the morning it makes me say, 'God it would be cool if that happened," Reznor told me this week while sitting backstage before a Nails concert in Toronto. "This is my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don't know. It was fun sitting and telling [the HBO] guys and watching them shake their head and having writers on board and producers that are in to it. It's been a fun thing."

"Year Zero" began (as so many things do in the music of NIN) from a place of negative emotion and sonic experimentation. Reznor was increasingly outraged by the geopolitical situation during the Bush years and he wanted to channel that fury into music, but he was loath to drift into the limiting lexicon of protest lyrics.

"How could I express what I was feeling in a way that didn't sound like bitching about George Bush? I mean, you know, I love Neil Young but I didn't want to listen to that record, really," he said, referring to the singer-songwriter's "Living with War." "My reaction to that kind of record is, 'We know this. It's obvious.'"

"So it started with me trying to write it as a piece of fiction. I was thinking, 'It could be the worst idea ever in the world but, if it doesn't work, it doesn't have to come out.' I started by writing a kind of world bible about what life would be like around 15 or 20 years from now if things continue on the same path. I spent a few weeks filling it in with the events that could lead to this kind of time and place. Then as an experiment I started writing songs about people in this place and from different points of view."