Battlestar Galactica was a quirky post-Star Wars space opera project, but it gained a new prominence in the past decade. BSG was Syfy’s flagship TV series for a long time, and Bryan Singer has been trying to make a Battlestar movie. But now, it looks like you might have to wait a long time for any more Battlestar.


Top image: Balsavor on Deviant Art.

Syfy aired the prequel TV movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome back in February, and that’s probably the last BSG you’ll see on Syfy for a while. Michael Taylor, who wrote Blood and Chrome, tells io9 that he hasn’t heard anything about Syfy wanting to continue the Blood and Chrome storyline.


And a Syfy spokesperson tells io9 that there are currently no plans for any further BSG spin-offs on Syfy.

Meanwhile, sources close to the Singer movie production tell io9 there’s basically nothing happening with it right now. Singer also told Coming Soon back in February that his Battlestar movie was on the back burner, but that he hopes to return to it after he’s done with X-Men: Days of Future Past. “I’d love to be able to get back to that, but for now I’m just focused on this X-Men business,” Singer said.

Last we heard, Singer was working with writer John Orloff (Band of Brothers, Anonymous) on a movie script that could connect to both the original 1978 TV series and the 2003 reboot. Or at least, not contradict either of those wildly different visions of Battlestar Galactica.


How is this possible? In 2011, Orloff told Hitfix:

I’m a huge fan of the original series and of the second show, too. But I always thought the first show was a little too heavily reliant on ‘Star Wars,’ you know? Whereas I think the second show was really original and really cool. And I think I’ve come up with a way to write this movie that won’t fuck any of that up. I’m not sure how much they want me to talk about it. Let’s just say it’s not what you expect. It will all work in the universe that exists. It will not conflict with anything Ron Moore has done. I don’t think you can compete with what he’s done.


As of August 2012, Singer said Orloff’s screenplay was in rewrites. And in October 2012, Orloff tweeted this tantalizing picture:


The biggest question mark about Orloff’s Battlestar script is whether you can really create a version that honors both the Glen Larson and the Ronald D. Moore/David Eick versions of BSG, which are so contradictory and different in their basic approach to the subject matter.

Back in 2001, Singer was trying to create his own new Battlestar TV series, which would have been a direct sequel to the 1978 TV show, not a reboot — and would have picked up a lot of the loose ends from the original series, as well as some dark themes that the original show never delved into that deeply. But the 9/11 attacks put Singer’s TV version on hold.



Concept art by Eric Chu.

So a lot of people had assumed that Singer’s movie would be like his abortive TV series: strictly a followup to the 1978 show, or a reboot along the same lines as the original show. That is, until Singer and Orloff started talking about connecting to both TV versions.


Of course, most audiences nowadays are probably way more familiar with the 2003 version than the original series, so if you produced a BSG movie without any “skin jobs,” or any of the complex politics that characterized the Syfy version, people might well be confused. And of course, Moore’s version ends with such a definite conclusion, it would be hard to create a direct sequel to it.

In any case, the Singer movie project is on hold, at least for now. And you definitely shouldn’t hold your breath for more BSG on television. (But, as Graeme McMillan points out on Twitter, Dynamite Comics is publishing a continuation of the original 1978 series right now.)


Says Taylor, “Hopefully, the Battlestar story isn’t over. I guess we shall see what the future brings.”