Mr Robot showrunner Sam Esmail’s Battlestar Galactica reboot needs a new home as streaming platform Peacock has reportedly passed on it.
A new take on the space opera TV series Battlestar Galactica is no longer in development at NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock, it’s been reported.
Originally announced in 2019, the Battlestar reboot was being overseen by Sam Esmail, creator of hit series Mr Robot, who was executive producer under his own company, Esmail Corp. Various writers had come and gone over its long gestation, while 2023’s Hollywood strikes also delayed work on show.
Esmail told Deadline in October 2023 that development on the new Battlestar Galactica was still ongoing, however, and things still sounded positive in January, when Derek Simonds, who wrote and directed TV’s The Sinner, was announced as its new screenwriter.
According to Variety, however, Battlestar Galactica has ceased development at Peacock, and Universal Content Productions – which had a deal with Esmail to make the series – is now free to sell it elsewhere. Universal Content Productions is the TV arm of the wider Universal Studio Group, which itself is part of NBCUniversal, which also owns Peacock. This means that a gigantic media company has essentially rejected its own series. If you find that baffling, don’t worry – so do we.
Battlestar Galactica, a space epic about humanity’s fight against the robotic might of the evil Cylons, was first created in 1978 by showrunner Glen A Larson. Its similarity to Star Wars, released the year before, made 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm rather cross, and the studio embarked on a legal battle to have the show taken off television. Needless to say, it failed.
The 2003-2009 Battlestar Galactica reboot was, if anything, an even bigger success, and it’s thought that Sam Esmail’s series would have been set in the same continuity as that show. Time will tell whether Esmail, a big Battlestar fan, will get his take on it greenlit elsewhere; perhaps he could find a home for it at Sky, which is owned by Comcast, which also owns NBCUniversal.
If not, then Esmail’s Battlestar will join a number of other attempted reboots and spin-offs that never happened. X-Men director Bryan Singer had one in the works in the late 90s, but this was scrapped during pre-production. Then there’s the film adaptation, said to be separate from Esmail’s proposed TV series, which was being worked on by X-Men: The Last Stand writer Simon Kinberg. The last we heard anything about that was in 2020.
More Battlestar Galactica news as we get it.
