Bryan Singer Confirms ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Lives Due To ‘Excaliber’ Death

Bad news for fantasy fans of ‘Excaliber’ means good news for sci-fi fans of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ as Bryan Singer has confirmed that the planned reboot of the 1981 epic movie ‘Excaliber’ has been officially killed and will not be made.

So what happened? According to Singer, “The project was with Warner Bros and what happened is that another King Arthur project was brought to them during that time. Basically, it was just more ready to go into production than ours was. That is why our version of ‘Excalibur’ ended up being negated.”

So why are ‘BG’ fans celebrating? Because Singer goes on to say, ‘…when that happened, it allowed me to go straight into developing ‘Battlestar Galactica’ – which I think will be really exciting.”  While no other news was given about the project, with Singer at the helm, this could become one fantastic sci fi movie.

If you remember, back in 2001, Singer was set to direct a TV version of ‘Battlestar Galactica’ for Fox. This version would have occurred 20 years after the original 1978 series when humans have decided to abandon the search for Earth and have set up the colony of New Caprica in an asteroid field. Over the next two decades, the humans have become decadent and obsessed with glitz, pleasure domes and gambling. Then the Cylons attack. The attack then brings the people back to a sense of purpose.

Sets were actually being built and production was about 2 months away from filming when the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers occurred on 9/11. Since a Cylon sneak attack was part of the main storyline, the network executives got a very nervous feeling filming something dealing with the issue of an attack “too close to home” and decided to shut down the production.

Then in 2009, Singer was once again approached to do a big screen adaptation of ‘BG’ for Universal. After signing on, not much was heard about the project until now.

Now we have Singer back on track with the movie which he claims will be “really exciting”. Will he be going back to his original idea from 2001 that never aired or do something completely different? Either way, with Singer’s impressive resume, you can be assured that he will definitely add (in a good way) to the mythology of ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

‘Battlestar Galactica’ Resurrected Online ‘Battlestar Galactica Online’ Now Live ‘Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome’ Game Review: ‘Battlestar Galactica Online’