Ronald D. Moore gave Sam Esmail permission to develop a new series. The project is not a reboot but an expansion of Ronald Moore's reimaging of the series from the early 2000s.
Producer Sam Esmail said in March 2021 that the series is pursuing an unconventional release format. "There might be episodes that are longer than others," he said. "There might be a three-episode arc. There might be a standalone episode that's a half-hour long. We don't want to put guardrails up at all. We want to do whatever's best for each episode ... What we're doing here is every episode you have the opportunity to change up the tone, to change up the story, to change up the point of view. So we're going to lean into that, not shy away from it."
Deadline reported in March 2021 that writer Michael Lesslie exited the project to pursue an adaptation of the Maddaddam trilogy by The Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood at Hulu.