"12 Monkeys" first trailer hit YouTube. SyFy says the upcoming "12 Monkeys" series is not a remake of Terry Gilliam's classic movie, 12 Monkeys, and will not follow the same path. The first 13 episodes of 12 Monkeys begins airing in January.

The screenplay was written Terry Matalas and Travis Ficket, who wrote Terra Nova.

In a panel on the Syfy show co-writer Travis Fickett told TV critics, "It wouldn't make sense just to tell the same story again."

"I think it's a complete sort of reimagining," said co-writer Terry Matalas. "We were all very, very big fans of the original film and had a deep love and respect for that material. So we didn't want to just redo what the movie does. We changed the rules."

The upcoming dramatic series stars Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull, Noah Bean, and Kirk but the Terry Gilliam classic 1995 film 12 Monkeys is just the starting point.

"Everything changed from the top down," says Matalas, "from Cole's character to Dr. Railly's character to some new characters. While the story has a lot of the same themes, it's very different."

Syfy president Dave Howe said "12 Monkeys is a captivating time travel adventure and high stakes race against the clock."

In the original film, it was left ambivalent whether Cole, played by Bruce Willis, was a time traveler or a lunatic.

In the TV show Fickett says Cole "is a time traveler ... But we're not saying he's not (also) an insane person. I think that's one thing that's sort of open for the series."

Matalas added "We always knew we wanted to do a serialized time travel show as early as five years ago, however, the audience wasn't ready. Since then they've collectively been trained on seasons of Lost."

12 Monkeys was inspired by "La Jetée" a short film made in 1962 by director Chris Marker that told the story of a man sent from a post-apocalyptic future to find and stop the source of a deadly plague that will eventually wipe out the human race. It starred Bruce Willis as James Cole, Madeleine Stowe as Kathryn Railly, Brad Pitt as Jeffrey Goines and Christopher Plummer as Dr. Goines. Gilliam originally wanted Nick Nolte to play James Cole and Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey Goines.