CheMateo wrote:So I hear the Bryan Singer has been tapped to direct a cinematic presentation of Battlestar Galactica. WannaB, you are the expert in these parts on all things related to Battlestar. How do you feel about this project?
At Comic-Con I attended the Battlestar Retrospective panel where Richard Hatch of both the original & re-imagined series, and Tom DeSanto talked about it. I also spoke with both men briefly on the matter over the weekend at the Battlestar Concert and autograph signings. A little background...
The original series aired from 1978-1979 and spawned a gawdy spin-off, "Galactica 1980." Prior to 9-11 Richard Hatch, DeSanto, and Singer were trying to produce a movie based on the original series, but the material hit too close to home given the terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda, so the project was shelved. A few years later Ronald D. Moore was working on a sci-fi series dealing with artificial people, and Moore was put in touch with DeSanto among others about possibly blending the projects. The result was a re-imagined version of Battlestar that dealt with relative, modern, socio-political issues such as torture, rape, abortion, genocide, military occupation, war, suicide bombing and other terrorist activities, and religious fundamentalism & extremism...the show's material was honored with a Peabody award which is usually reserved for journalistic visual-media productions as they are most likely to present socially conscious material. The year they were honored, South Park also received a Peabody and the story behind Trey's & Matt's discovery of Battlestar as well as their acceptance speeches were priceless.
In any case, now that the re-imagined version of Battlestar has ended, DeSanto, Singer, and Hatch have been offered a chance to pick up the pieces of the movie/remake project they started on a decade ago. The downside is that it is Universal trying to capitalize on the popularity of the re-imagined show, and the desire of it's fans to see more Battlestar material. So the new Singer/Battlestar movies has nothing to do with the recent series, but rather the 1978 series.
I'd still like to see this film version of the original, however, I am more of a fan of the re-imagined version.