With all of the recent reboots and sequels in Hollywood, it is not that surprising to hear of yet another franchise being relaunched by its parent studio in a desperate hope to rekindle fan awareness and squeeze a few more bucks out of the franchise. With that in mind, Universal is preparing to relaunch ‘Battlestar Galactica’ for the THIRD TIME, this time as a movie, following on the heels of the immensely successful revival of the series by SciFi (now SyFy) back in the early 2000’s.
The series was originally started back in the late 1970s as an answer to ‘Star Wars’ with its own brand of space opera amidst massive star-ships, the surviving members of the human race, and an “evil” race of robots known as Cylons hell-bent on destroying the last of mankind.
This week’s news regarding this relaunch is about Universal finding a writer for the new movie. It seems they have hired Jay Basu to write the screenplay, with Basu’s most well-known credit to date being on Sony’s ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web,’ though he does also have the upcoming ‘Charlie’s Angels’ reboot (so he has some experience with reboots) on his resume, as well as developing a sequel to Jim Henson’s 1986 film ‘Labyrinth.’ Point being, the man is no stranger to culling old franchises and bringing them back to life, though how successful he is we will not truly know until some of these projects actually hit theaters.
Personally, I am not sure ‘Battlestar Galactica’ has been gone long enough for them to relaunch the franchise again, and even if it was time, I am just not sure they can tell the story the way it should be presented in movie format. It seems to me the franchise lends itself much better to the television medium, and I am worried the movie will either rush through important plot points way too quickly to try to jam everything in, or else be a “franchise starter” where they leave too many open doors and plot-holes and cliffhangers with the idea that this will be but the first film, and the ones that come after will fill in the gaps (a style that I hate, and I think the public does as well, which is why it has not been working of late).
What are your thoughts here? Are you ready to see ‘Battlestar Galactica’ rebooted up on the big screen? Let us know in the comments below!
Spurce: The Wrap
