Sam Esmail’s Idea for Releasing New ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Is Unlike Anything Else on TV
With NBC’s streaming service Peacock running smoothly for the last several months, many have wondered about the big projects it announced back when it was starting out. One of them was an ambitious retread of the popular science-fiction series “Battlestar Galactica,” to be produced by “Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail.
In a recent interview with Collider, Esmail gave some insight into how he plans to approach the series. He said he specifically reached out to Ronald D. Moore, the helmer of the 2004 reboot of “Battlestar” that became a groundbreaking show in its own right, in order to secure his blessing.
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“I spoke to him before I even took on the project to make sure that it’s all kosher with him, because the last thing I want to do is step on his toes, and the one thing we both agreed on is that it won’t be a reboot of what he did,” said Esmail.
Esmail said they’re still in the planning stages for the pilot, but one thing audiences can expect is a release strategy unlike other shows, in that it could be one episode a week or several depending on the mandates of the story.
“For me, it was like, ‘Let’s get in there and tell the right story and it will tell us how many episodes.’ We may dump three episodes in a row because it’s a three-episode-long battle sequence that needs to be dropped in a row even though they’re three signifying chapters, and maybe each chapter is switching a point of view within that battle sequence. There may be a 20-minute episode that’s the backstory of one of the characters that gets dropped right after that,” Esmail said.
He said the show will see a lot of experimentation and go from there, especially once they enter the writers’ room. Esmail himself will not head the series, but said he is open to possibly directing some episodes down the line.
“Battlestar Galactica” originated in 1978 and told the story of a fugitive fleet looking for Earth after the destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Mankind. Ronald D. Moore’s incarnation, running from 2004 to 2009, extrapolated on that plot, infusing it with a stark allegory on America post-9/11.
When Esmail’s “Battlestar Galactica” will premiere on Peacock has yet to be announced.
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