Roswell, Writer Boards Battlestar Galactica – Ron Moore

Thanks to Karen, and Greg for sending this in

From: Zap2It

Roswell, Writer Boards Battlestar Galactica

by Kate O’Hare

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – After a couple of years with teen aliens in New Mexico on UPN’s “Roswell” (which has its series finale on May 14), Ronald D. Moore is ready to head back into space again.

A writer and/or producer on the first three “Star Trek” spin-off series and a couple of the “Trek” movies, Moore has signed on as writer for Sci Fi Channel’s upcoming four-hour miniseries version of the ’70s cult science-fiction show “Battlestar Galactica.”

The series — which so closely resembled 1977’s “Star Wars” that it inspired a lawsuit — had a very brief run in 1978-79, then returned in downscaled, revamped form a year later as “Galactica 1980.”

The highest-budgeted series of its day, the effects-heavy “Battlestar Galactica” followed a ragtag human fleet, the remnants of a surprise attack by the evil alien Cylons, as it followed the last surviving battlestar, commanded by silver-haired Adama (Lorne Greene), to a mythical refuge called “Earth.”

Original series star Richard Hatch worked for years to resurrect the “Galactica” franchise, writing novels and even, in 1999, completing a four-and-a-half minute film trailer illustrating his concept for a new series.

In the end, Universal Studios went with a concept from “X-Men” director Bryan Singer, but when the success of that film, and its impending sequel, caused Singer to drop out late in 2001, the project changed hands again.

The current executive producer is David Eick (“American Gothic,” “Spy Game”), with Moore writing and Breck Eisner (“Taken,” “The Invisible Man” ) attached to direct.

Moore says the new “Battlestar Galactica” will function both as a miniseries and as a pilot for a proposed series. “I was a fan as a kid,” he says. “I was right there in the ’70s, watching along with everybody else. I remember everybody was talking about it.”

Moore isn’t doing a sequel, but instead is re-imagining the concept from the beginning. “I’m going to go back and retell the origin story, and that will form the basis of the miniseries. There will certainly be changes. I’m trying to just take a different approach to the material. I want to keep the underlying myth of the show, which is what makes people remember it, and update a lot of it.”

“In the broadest strokes, I don’t want to do ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Star Wars’ all over again. There’s a certain style of filmmaking associated with those shows, which is a very romantic, glossy approach to science fiction, with big, lush, orchestral scores, etc.”

“I’ve been wanting for a while to go in a different direction with film science fiction, and we’re doing it with ‘Galactica.’ We’re going to try to make it, for want of a better word, more real, a real place, down and dirty, with a sort of ‘You are there’ feel to it.”

“It’s going to be — and this is a bad phrase — a ‘down to Earth’ sort of place. It’s going to be more about the people aboard the Galactica and the ragtag, fugitive fleet than it will be about aliens of the week, planets of the week or anything like that.”