Peacock’s 'Battlestar Galactica' Reboot Is Still Alive, Changing Showrunners

There must be some kind of way out of here, said creator to development hell

Well that’s a reason to get…well maybe not excited, but at least hopeful. It turns out that Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica reboot did not die. Derek Simonds, creator of USA’s The Sinner will now serve as writer, executive producer and showrunner.

It’s been a long road for this third iteration of the popular sci-fi franchise owned by Universal, having been announced in 2019 as part of the NBCUniversal streamer’s initial content slate with the Saved by the Bell and Punky Brewster continuations, Dr. Death, and Rutherford Falls, among other originals and many library titles. Which means it was probably was expected to be a year 2 or 3 project will now be a year 5 or 6 project for Peacock following its wider July 2020 debut. Not only has the project faced COVID and extensive and widespread labor disputes in the industry, but the previous writer/producer, Michael Lesslie, was reported to have departed in March 2021.

The base premise of any iteration of the series, originally created tells of centered on the last group of humans on the verge of extinction in the one remaining battleship group, anchored by the Galactica. They fight to survive after a series of wars with a a cybernetic race, The Cylons, that rebelled, evolved, and destroyed the Twelve Colonies with a massive nuclear attack. Their one chance for survival is a desperate search for a fabled Thirteenth Colony known as Earth. The original series ran a single season from 1978-79 on ABC and starred Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict and Lorne Greene. It was followed by lesser-received sequel Galactica 1980. The first reimagining, developed by Ron Moore, began as a three-hour miniseries on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2003, before launching as a full series that ran from the next year until 2009 for 74 more episodes, starring Edward James Olmos, Tricia Helfer, James Callis, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackoff and Grace Park.

This new version has been a passion project for executive producer Sam Esmail, who served the same duties on the hit Netflix film Leave The World Behind, but is best known as creator of another USA Network series, Mr. Robot. In fact, he has at least spoken about the series in recent months with great optimism, saying “We are working on it. And in fact, I just read a great outline and it’s in great shape. Because the strike is over now – at least the WGA strike is over – we’re back into developing it.”

Source: Deadline