Posted in: Peacock, SYFY, TV | Tagged: battlestar galactica, peacock, ronald d. moore, syfy

Battlestar Galactica Reboot Reportedly Not Moving Ahead at Peacock

Reports are that Sam Esmail's (Mr. Robot) take on Battlestar Galactica for Peacock isn't moving forward, though the project could be shopped.

Back in November 2023 (four years after it was announced), things were sounding pretty promising when it came to Sam Esmail's (Mr. Robot, Homecoming) take on the Battlestar Galactica franchise for Peacock. In fact, the new year would kick off with the news that Derek Simonds (The Sinner) had been tapped to write, executive produce, and serve as showrunner. Six months later, things have changed again – and not in a good way. Based on exclusive reporting from Variety, the reboot project is no longer in development – though studio UCP could shop the project for a new home. Esmail and Chad Hamilton were set to executive produce through the Esmail Corp. production banner. In  2021, writer Michael Lesslie left the project – a year after joining the series.

Battlestar Galactica: Sam Esmail Offers Insights

Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter while promoting his Netflix film Leave the World Behind back at the end of November 2023, Esmail offered an update on where things stood at that point, explaining why he wanted the "cream of the crop" to run the series, and how AI would be one of the factors that would play a role in their storytelling. "We have a great outline, and we're probably going to go to pilot soon," Esmail shared, which was definitely some unexpected good news at the time.

Why Esmail Isn't Running the Series: "Because I know myself as a filmmaker, and I don't know if hard sci-fi is something I'm going to be the A-plus person to pull off. And Battlestar needs the cream of the crop. But I love the world and what Ron Moore did with the [2004 version] — how it was such an allegory for what we were going through at the time of 9/11. I knew that if we bring in the right partners to write and film the show, I could be on that other end as a person of guidance to say, 'OK, I think this is working; it's the same magic I felt watching the Ron Moore version.'"

Esmail: "Battlestar Galactica" Needs to Match Audience's Growing Tech Sophistication: "The world is changing way too fast for us. I mean, when we started working on it, I obviously was aware of AI, but now, four or five years later, it's in the public consciousness, and now that's so influential in how we're going to tell the story. The allegory piece is something that is crystallized in a different way, too. The focus is the same, which is the fear of tech and how it might take over, but this idea of just 'the robots are going to be our overlords' is a very facile and overly simplistic way of looking at it. Now that the audience is more sophisticated about the consequences, I think we have to match that with 'Battlestar.'"

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