Wait ’til the old man hears about this! Those frakkin’ toasters over in Hollywood are once again trying their hand at bringing Battlestar Galactica to the big screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, producer Michael DeLuca (The Social Network) is partnering with Bluegrass Films (Battleship) to develop the venerable sci-fi series as a franchise at Universal Pictures. No writers are attached to the project at this time, and little else is known about the planned iteration.
The original Battlestar Galactica series came from creator Glen A. Larson during the post-Star Wars boom of sci-fi, lasting one short but memorable season in 1978 and 1979. They brought it back for another 10-episode run as Galactica 1980 in the wake of a massive letter-writing campaign by fans convinced executives at ABC to give it another shot. The series always had cult status, but gained a degree of mainstream success with a politically charged, reimagined Syfy series that ran from 2004 to 2009.
The Syfy series, developed by Outlander‘s Ronald D. Moore, envisioned humanity in tatters, on the run from a race of deadly robots known as Cylons, whose brutal assaults nearly rendered humanity extinct. The remnants of humanity fled from their hyper-intelligent, robotic oppressors on a fleet of starships, led by the Galactica and her crew, on the hunt for the legendary human colony of Earth.
Over the years, there have been a number of abortive attempts to bring Battlestar Galactica to the big screen. Back in 1999, Wing Commander producer Todd Moyer attempted to develop a feature film adaptation centering on Battlestar Pegasus, but it fell apart. X-Men: Apocalypse director Bryan Singer was also attached to adapt the series for a film in 2000, but the 9/11 attacks scared execs into pulling the plug on the project, which apparently opened with a terrorist attack that hit a little too close to home. Singer had remained attached to the project in varying degrees over the years, but departed in 2014, after which Universal tapped Transcendence writer Jack Paglen to pen a new script. Now it seems that the Paglen script has also stalled out and we are back at square one as far as a BSG movie is concerned.
Given how early in the process this project seems to be, it’ll be a long while before we see anything tangible. So that should give you just enough time to rewatch the 2004 series another 30 to 70 times before the film hits theaters or eventually falls apart like the end of the 2004 series. And that’ll give execs plenty of time to realize they need to get the 2004 series cast back on board because they are the one, true incarnation that we love and need. If they don’t, they’ll probably make our editor in chief Rachel Heine shake her fists toward the heavens. And believe me when I say you don’t want that.
Nerdist has reached out for comment from Universal but had yet to hear back at the time of publication.
What would you like to see from a Battlestar Galactica movie? Let us know in the comments below.
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HT: The Hollywood Reporter, io9
Image: Syfy
Dan Casey is the senior editor of Nerdist and the author of books about Star Wars and the Avengers. You can follow him on Twitter (@Osteoferocious).
