To quote from part of the Sacred Scrolls in Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica update, “All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” That appears to be Universal's approach to the slowly developing Battlestar Galactica film, as the studio has hired Transcendence writer Jack Paglen to begin work on a new story.
Unlike previous plans, which seemed to take Moore’s cult early 2000s series into consideration, it appears that the plan is now to wipe the board clean and completely re-imagine of the story. Frakking hell!
The original series creator, Glen Larson, is on board to produce the movie, which Paglen will kick off writing based partly on the original 1978 version, in which humans were battling the deadly cybernetic Cylons while also looking for the planet Earth. Moore’s take on the story, which ran for four seasons starting in 2003 with a miniseries, opened up the universe to explore deeper concepts of faith, morality and politics while also providing some well-executed action.
It remains to be seen which direction Paglen will take, but he’s becoming something of a sci-fi specialist between this, Transcendence (due out April 25) and his time working on the Prometheus sequel. It’ll be his job to crack a concept that has frustrated several filmmakers in the years even before the Moore series, with Bryan Singer attached more than once to try to bring the story to life.