Bryan Singer has wanted to do his version of the classic 1970s science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica for some time. In 2000, he was developing a mini-series for the FOX Network, but the plans fell through in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Sci-Fi Channel would go on to successful revive the series a few years later. (At right is a look at how Singer’s series who have reimagined the alien Cylon robots.)
But now that Warner Brothers has decided to pass on Singer’s planned remake of John Boorman’s King Arthur tale Excalibur he had been developing at the studio, the director is setting his sights on Galactica being his next project. And the project is taking its first big step today as it is being reported that Universal is closing a deal with screenwriter John Orloff to script the film.
A self-professed Galactica fan, Orloff told Deadline, “I have wanted to write this movie since I was 12 years old, and built a Galactica model from scratch out of balsa wood, cardboard, old model parts and LEDs.”
Orloff has previously written Anonymous, the Shakespeare conspiracy film that opens later this month, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and the Angelina Jolie vehicle A Mighty Heart.
As noted before, the franchise had a very popular and critically acclaimed revival on the Sci-Fi Channel that wrapped up just a few years ago. Will fans want to see a new iteration of the story of a rag tag fleet of spaceship fleeing a genocidal attack to search for a new home on a fabled planet called Earth so soon?
