After years of trying to get it off the ground, it looks as though the 1999 cult favourite science fiction comedy movie Galaxy Quest is going to become a TV series. The movie was about a group of washed-up actors who starred in a thinly-veiled parody of a Star Trek series and who now make their living attending conventions. Aliens believe that the TV series was real and recruit the actors for an intergalactic war.
The 90s movie starred Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, and Tony Shalhoub. The sci-fi series is being developed by Paramount Plus, after an attempt to get the series made at Amazon failed to get off the ground in 2015.
“We were ready to sign up, and [then] Alan Rickman passed away and Tim Allen wasn’t available, and everybody’s schedule was all weird. It was going to shoot, like, right now. And how do you fill that void of Alan Rickman? That’s a hard void to fill,” Sam Rockwell said in April 2016, three months after Rickman died of cancer.
Tim Allen also spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the revival in 2016 “Galaxy Quest is really close to being resurrected in a very creative way. It’s closer than I can tell you, but I can’t say more than that. The real kicker is that Alan now has to be left out. It’s been a big shock on many levels.”
It’s not known whether the comedy series being developed by Paramount Plus will involve any of the original cast. Obviously, Weaver and Rockwell would be pretty big names to have involved, but huge Hollywood stars are all over TV these days.
Galaxy Quest, along with Mars Attacks! (1996) and Men in Black (1997), was part of a peak time for comedic alien movies. Check out our guide to the best science fiction movies.