I may be psychic. Or perhaps Stephen Gallagher is. Or perhaps the two of us combined are. Last night, Stephen took me to dinner with his daughter Ellen at a terrific Chinese restaurant in Soho. Among the many things we talked about how much we enjoyed the cheesy, silly 1970s Gerry Anderson series UFO (I absolutely love the Barry Gray score). So I was a bit startled to discover the news today that Robert Evans is developing a theatrical remake of UFO. The script is being written by Ryan Gaudet and Joseph Kanarek.
The Robert Evans Co. has a first-look deal at Paramount, which will be first stop for the project. "We know the importance of the 'UFO' series brand to ITV Global, and we will work closely with them to build this into a franchise," Evans said.
This is not the first time a revival of UFO, either for TV or film, has been attempted. I believe the last one was for MGM and would have been shot in Australia. I wonder if they will keep the women with the colored hair…and the secret government base under a movie studio…and the Interceptors that could only fire one missile.
Well, yeah…but you also said Dollhouse was going to get canceled, which didn’t happen. So maybe your psychic bits are a little rusty:P
Yes, some of the cheesy shows are just great! I used to love those very poorly animated “Hercules” cartoons, where they used the same still shots over and over again. But it was just so cool when he raised his magic ring and lightning struck and he got his magic powers! There is just something about a “secret magic ring” that’s so appealing. It was the same fascinating with “Felix the Cat” cartoons and his magic bag!
And will the men wear Nehru jackets? And what about the submarine that can launch a jet fighter?
Loved that show. That, and SPACE: 1999.
I remember this one well. I think I still have a couple of tie-in novels somewhere in the house.
Yikes. I guess in these Reboot years, anything is likely to be regurgitated (not that I didn’t have the ViewMaster wheels of 3-D slides from the series, but that was because that way you didn’t really have to worry about the acting nor the scripts, and we’re talking about a series that was one when I was about 7yo). Well, as with BSG, they have such a low bar here that it would be difficult to do a worse job (but there are the instructive examples of THE BIONIC WOMAN and apparently KNIGHT RIDER, which somehow I’ve managed to not care about in all three [four?] of its iterations).