Battlestar Galactica to the Big Screen?

[Apolloisall]

Originally Posted by TwoBrainedCylon

Suffice to say that whatever the reasons, pitching a Galactica film and saying there is a built in audience has got to be a hard sell these days.

I agree.

[BST]

Originally Posted by TwoBrainedCylon

I'm not sure I agree with this. Stargate was hitting close to the ratings and there were pitches at Sci-Fi to give the GINO money to Stargate and let them run with it. Also, just about anything that was shown could garner similar figures. Recall that the cheap movies of the week and reruns of old films like "The Day After" were beating the GINO ratings.

All my best,


Russell

I think my point was missed. When I mentioned, "there was nothing else in the Sci-Fi stables...", the inference was that there was nothing that wasn't already on the air. No "mid-season replacements", etc. If they replaced it with something already on the air, there still would have been a time slot, somewhere, to fill.

The only other thought would be that Ron and Dave a "no-cancellation" clause in their contracts. But, I don't have much faith in the likelihood of that possibility.

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Ah, -- I understand now.

Also as I type this, it seems to me that I recall Michael Hinman claiming sometime back that Ron and some of the key players had a 5-year contract when GINO went from pilot to series. If this was true then slamming the doors on GINO after S2 would still have cost the network some cash with no chance of regaining the lost money. That may have helped GINO float longer than the numbers said it should have.

It seems that Doug Dexler at least agrees with my take on on the studio and network mindset. In a recent interview on Trekweb, he's talking about Blood and Chrome going to a series. I find it interesting in regards to the larger debate on a feature film and the risk-averse mindset.

Doug Says:

In one very important way it was different from anything else I’ve ever worked on. The entire show was green screen. There were no sets. This happened because of the shape of the economy. Building sets for a television show like TNG or the last Battlestar Galactica is just prohibitively expensive. No one wants to take that chance. Besides, the way the networks have been doing business lately, it’s kind of bizarre. They’ll cancel a show after one episode. If a show doesn’t perform right out of the gate, they cancel it. In the day when you thought a show would be kept on the air for a year, you might take a chance because you think it will develop an audience over time. With the current network mindset, there’s no chance of building an audience, when after one or two episodes, it's canceled. It’s just impossible. So, they want make a show as inexpensively as possible, so if it’s canceled after one or two episodes, no one gets their head chopped off.

The rest of the interview is here: http://trekweb.com/articles/2011/12/...V-Series.shtml


All my best,

Russell

[Apolloisall]

No sets. No more. Blarg.

[TwoBrainedCylon]

I'm not bothered by the "no sets" thing -- yet. I think the VFX team that worked on GINO through S2 onward was very talented. Its essentially the team doing "Blood and Chrome".

I did get curious on the ratings data. Things weren't quite as clear as I'd thought but the earlier premise seems to hold up. You can interpret its meaning as you will but the data is what it is.

Seems that making a pitch for the original series should have been easier than I thought. Checking the GINO series sales figures on Amazon, at the time of this writing, GINO is ranking at 1,551 (lower is better). That places it far better than contemporary competitors such as Sarah Conner, which rates at 9,221. Its not as good as my beloved Firefly, which scores a super strong 896, but it is almost three times better than the original Battlestar Galactica series whose sales mark it at 3,975. To me, for the 1978 series to show that strongly is a good sign, although I am a bit dismayed to see that it scores worse than the 1979 Buck Rogers series which ranks at 3,509. It still beats Mork and Mindy whose ranking is 10,146, Welcome Back Kotter at 6,337, and Happy Days at 4,198. It doesn't beat Sandford and Son which ranks 2,016.

By comparison, the A-Team got a major film deal and even with the push of the film, it ranks at 4,615.

I wouldn't be holding my breath for a film version of Bossom Buddies. Even with Tom Hanks, it only ranks at 14,585.

Of course, using this same data, Bryan Singer is making a pretty good career choices as "The Munsters" ranks at 1,727. That places it just under the ranking for MASH which comes in at 1,795 (sorry Steve).

EDIT: Somehow, the GINO figures changed dramatically when I hit REFRESH. Sorry about the earlier bad post.

All my best,


Russell

[Apolloisall]

I hate the no sets thing. Even Lucas couldn't make it look *right* in the SW prequels. It's way more distracting than optical blue screen to me when live actors are involved.
I suddenly wish CGI was never developed...

[martok2112]

Originally Posted by TwoBrainedCylon

Of course, using this same data, Bryan Singer is making a pretty good career choices as "The Munsters" ranks at 1,727. That places it just under the ranking for MASH which comes in at 1,795 (sorry Steve).



All my best,


Russell

GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

[Benedict]

Originally Posted by Apolloisall

I hate the no sets thing. Even Lucas couldn't make it look *right* in the SW prequels. It's way more distracting than optical blue screen to me when live actors are involved.
I suddenly wish CGI was never developed...

Puts me in mind of the great Derek Meddings. Look at what he did with model-work.

Or films (non-Meddings) like Poseidon Adventure or some such that was able to do a decent effect without CGI and still be awesome.

[Apolloisall]

Originally Posted by Benedict

Puts me in mind of the great Derek Meddings. Look at what he did with model-work.

Yes indeed!

[Norsehound]

Thought I'd jump on CF to find out definitive news on the new Galactica movie. Guess it's not what I'm hoping for if the complaints are valid...

I feel to an extent that neither of the series really did the concept complete justice. I wanted a scifi romp in space with hallmarks of mythology guiding the plot. A sister civilization of man out there with greater and closer ties to our modern legends than on earth, obviously. A big struggle between the moral powers of good and evil and the unanswered questions about God and the supernatural paraded before a Science fiction setting but remaining ambiguous enough to remain a source of the unknown.

The original run was dated for it's time in the 1970s... really the only plots I thought salvageable were all of the two-parters. War of the Gods was specially prominent in my mind.

The new show missed this entirely and had different focuses altogether. It only paid lip service to religion and morality was always in the dark.

If the movie is going in the route of the new show (More realism, less wonder), I expect to be disappointed. I don't think I'll ever see the concept of Battlestar Galactica realized in the way I wanted it to be unless I go create something myself that fills that void.

Ah well.

[Apolloisall]

Originally Posted by Norsehound

I don't think I'll ever see the concept of Battlestar Galactica realized in the way I wanted it to be unless I go create something myself that fills that void.

I feel your pain, no, seriously.

[Senmut]

Agreed, ad infinitum. While I think some of the one-hour ones did fine, it's true a doubt that we'll ever see what we truly hope for.

[Apolloisall]

Originally Posted by Senmut

it's true a doubt that we'll ever see what we truly hope for.

But YOU help create what we hoped for... in written form.

[Senmut]

Many thanks. I have done what I hoped is justice to the concept, the show itself, the actors/actresses, and the fans. I only wish I could make it appear on film, to add to what the stars gave us, in place of...well.
Again, multum gratiam.

[peter noble]

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/08/02...-singer-update

[kingfish]

wow no info at all. on another front dallas has been renewed for another season. who says a continuation of a show does not work.

[peter noble]

Originally Posted by kingfish

wow no info at all.

Actually it does. It tell us that the writer has done his first draft of the screenplay and that is now being revised. It also tells us it's going to be some sort of mish-mash of BG and NBG.

[TwoBrainedCylon]

"I hope to do it at some point".

That says its a concept that really has no legs at the moment. Its a script idea and nothing more.

However, I am pleased he's trying an approach that he thinks will work within all that exists and not trash one version or the other. At this point, I'm favorable of something that would either try to bring it all together (alternate universes or whatever dramatic thing has to make that work) or will add one more version into the mix.

The latter may seem like a small development but in my opinion, three versions will force fans to start looking at the franchise as a collection of elements rather than a "my way or the highway" concept. Perhaps through that, some unity might take place and we might end up with something closer to what we find enjoyable.

To explain my mindset, I really disliked almost all of GINO, thought the pilot for Caprica was pretty good, and was compelled by the Blood and Chrome trailer. If Singer says his script is "Really, really cool", I'm ready to give it a chance as it may deliver some great stuff, although it sounds like the funding and enthusiasm for anything Galactica these days is pretty low.

Truthfully, after seeing this, I'm a bit more hopeful than I was.

[BST]

I'd like to be hopeful but, after nearly 34 years and at least the last several involving Singer, I would have expected a bit more concrete information.

Count me solidly in the "wait and see" category.

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by BST

I'd like to be hopeful but, after nearly 34 years and at least the last several involving Singer, I would have expected a bit more concrete information.

Count me solidly in the "wait and see" category.

same here.......

Originally Posted by peter noble

It also tells us it's going to be some sort of mish-mash of BG and NBG.

Wasn't that what the video game attempted?

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but this seems to me to be a great way to minimize the audience, since it seems that the group who likes both GINO and BSG is much smaller than either of the two fan bases in and of themselves.

[martok2112]

Yeah, the PS2/Xbox game of BSG was sorta meant to be a prequel to the new show's miniseries, but it largely kept to the original series feel. Adama and Cain are Viper pilots, both serving aboard the Galactica under Commander Magus. (Interesting to note is that Cain is a male in the video game, and a female in the new series...so maybe somewhere along the way, he got a sex change ha ha ha.)

I don't really mean to spoil, but, I am going under the presumption that pretty much anyone who has the game, has it, and its sales have probably gone about as far as they're gonna go....but, at the end of the game, we see the original series Galactica move past the camera, and it goes out of camera frame. When the camera reacquires the Big G, she is the new series ship. So, this would suggest that the original series ship is the pre-mod design for the Moore series ship. (Quite the opposite in my fanfic...possibly to become fan animated movie--Galactica: The Last Battlestar, in which the original series Big G is the newest and most state of the art ship in the Colonial Fleet. The new series ships are the old-tech in my story.)

[David Kerin]

If I remember correctly the XBOX/PS2 game started production based on the DeSanto/Singer version, which was still on track when they started designing the game. So many of the production designs match what was in their Galactica. Also the Viper was designed for this game, and was liked by the GINO production team and adapted as their Viper. I know I read that somewhere but cannot remember where. So when things went from Singer/DeSanto over to Moore's version, the game was retrofitted with a few things to tie into Moore's Galactica. Such as the ship transition in the end, and the opening narration about the machines turning against the human creators.

One other thing that makes it really obvious that its not originally based on Moore's version is the existence of aliens, which Moore was adamant would not be in his universe. The game has an alien Imperious Leader (though different looking from TOS), and we see the alien Hasari.

For me I enjoy the game as a glimpse into what might have been in the DeSanto series. I just wish the gameplay was designed a bit better. I do have an old mod for Freespace where you fly a Viper against Raiders, and its all old school Battlestar Galactica. That's fun. Wish they continued development.

[Centurion Draco]

Originally Posted by monolith21

So how do we re-energize the fan base to get 'em talking about this again? I think unfortunately its the major movers and shakers that are sort of burnt out. Rightfully so, they did a lot and got slapped in the face for their efforts.

What about running another ad?

Not going to happen, been suggested, not enough motiviation left in the original fanbase to light a fart.

Fracking sad IMHO.

[martok2112]

Originally Posted by David Kerin

If I remember correctly the XBOX/PS2 game started production based on the DeSanto/Singer version, which was still on track when they started designing the game. So many of the production designs match what was in their Galactica. Also the Viper was designed for this game, and was liked by the GINO production team and adapted as their Viper. I know I read that somewhere but cannot remember where. So when things went from Singer/DeSanto over to Moore's version, the game was retrofitted with a few things to tie into Moore's Galactica. Such as the ship transition in the end, and the opening narration about the machines turning against the human creators.

One other thing that makes it really obvious that its not originally based on Moore's version is the existence of aliens, which Moore was adamant would not be in his universe. The game has an alien Imperious Leader (though different looking from TOS), and we see the alien Hasari.

For me I enjoy the game as a glimpse into what might have been in the DeSanto series. I just wish the gameplay was designed a bit better. I do have an old mod for Freespace where you fly a Viper against Raiders, and its all old school Battlestar Galactica. That's fun. Wish they continued development.

I would've loved for the PS2/Xbox game to have been multi-player, Colonials vs Cylons. And yeah, looking at a lot of it, it was indeed drawn on some of the DeSanto/Singer concepts...especially the Centurions I think. The only thing I didn't like was the banana shaped Cylon Raiders. Ugly!

I would've loved to see the old school Galactica game built on the Freespace engine. Beyond The Red Line, based on the new series, is built on the FreeSpace 2 engine I believe. I'd play either of them.

[Dawg]

Originally Posted by Centurion Draco

Not going to happen, been suggested, not enough motiviation left in the original fanbase to light a fart.

Fracking sad IMHO.

CD, we got burned, and burned badly. The extent of that burning is evident in your own post - we never used the word "Frack" in that manner until after 2003.

All we can hope for in any future Galactica is that there are some recognizable elements from the original - and I'm not talking about ship designs.

I am
Dawg

[BST]

,...and I always thought that the word was "frak".

No, -ed, -ing just, "frak".

[Dawg]

I believe it was "ck." I think dropping the "c" is another gift from 2003.

I am
Dawg

[JLHurley]

I thought adding the "c" was a 2003 gift...and don't recall personally ever writing it with a "c" from 1978 to present.

Regardless, that video gave me no hope whatsoever that we'll see a BG revival from Singer. Hopefully I'll be proven very, very wrong very, very quickly!

"Some sort of mish-mash of BG and NBG" sounds dreadfully uninteresting; just like the video game.

Count me out.