Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica Movie Is On Hold
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They say no news is good news, but when it comes to the Hollywood development process, no news often means a project has slid into that abyss known as Development Hell. Sometimes that’s bad news, if it’s a project you were really excited to see. But then other times, it just means all is right with the world. We’ll leave it to you to figure out which this qualifies as, but Bryan Singer’s Battlestar Galactica feature film is now on hold.
Speaking to Coming Soon, Singer reveals that his BSG plans have been back-burnered thanks to his new involvement with X-Men: Days of Future Past, the sequel to the surprise hit, X-Men: First Class. “I have that one on hold for a moment, so hopefully, I’d love to be able to get back to that, but for now I’m just focused on this X-Men business.” There’s no telling how long that hold will last, or when/if Singer will get back to his Battlestar Galactica movie, but it will likely be several years away at the least.
As with any high-profile director, Singer has a ton of different projects he’s involved with — or rumored to be involved with — at any given time. Singer’s been talking up his Battlestar Galactica movie since at least 2011, but news of the remake has been sparse in recent months. The last we heard anything was back in August, when he mentioned that the script was undergoing revisions.
There has also been conflicting word about what direction the BSG film would take. Back in 2009, it was planned to be an outright reboot under the auspices of original series creator Glen Larson, and ignoring Ron Moore’s successful Sci-Fi Channel series that ran from 2004 – 2009. But by October of 2011, Singer was involved and it was rumored that it might in fact exist within the same universe as Moore’s version. Is that still the case? We’ll have to wait and see.
At this point, it’s been several years since the Sci-Fi Channel series completed its run, so the thought of a new BSG reboot doesn’t seem quite as pointless as it once did. That being said, it still feels really, really pointless. At this point we’ve seen two different versions of the same story. Sure, that happens all the time in Hollywood — how many times have we watched Bruce Wayne’s parents get blown away? — but if there’s going to be a new BSG revamp, whether as a movie or a series, I’d rather we wait until somebody comes up with a really interesting or clever way to approach the material one more time. Is that somebody Singer? I have no idea, but I can’t say I’m shedding any tears over this one taking up space in Development Hell.
Of course, all this just highlights one thing that’s already been irritating us here at GFR in recent months. Whether you liked Moore’s version of Battlestar Galactica or not, there’s one story with loads of potential that we have yet to see: the original war between the colonies and the Cylons. We saw a fragment of that with the recent web series, Blood & Chrome, but it looks like that fragment is all we’ll get. That potential will just stay on the shelf in Syfy’s Big-Ass Warehouse of Good Ideas They’ll Never Use. And that’s a real shame.
