Galaxy Quest is going to the small screen, and a Star Trek actor is coming with it.
This article is more than 2 years old
A lot of movies and television shows have been inspired by Star Trek. From Star Wars to The Orville, Hollywood has been creating similar stories for decades. And somewhere in the middle, there was Galaxy Quest, which paid homage to the sci-fi genre while also serving as a parody.
After a lukewarm reception upon its release, Galaxy Quest quietly earned a cult following over the years. Star Trek fans loved the film for its parody qualities while mainstream viewers began to enjoy the comedy elements. Now, two decades after its release, a Galaxy Quest television series is reportedly being developed by Star Trek alum Simon Pegg and Succession writer Georgia Pritchett.
Pritchett revealed the news while promoting her new series in an interview with the U.K’s Times. No further details about the project were revealed as it’s probably in the very early stages of development. This isn’t the first time an adaptation of Galaxy Quest has been in the works. In 2015 Amazon had plans to create a series with the original cast, but the death of Alan Rickman scrapped the idea. Then in 2017, Paul Sheer was tapped to write a version of the series, but nothing ever came of it.
Released in 1999, Galaxy Quest followed the cast of a fictional defunct cult television series that are visited by actual aliens who think the series is an accurate documentary and drawn into a real interstellar conflict. The movie featured a stellar cast including Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, and Daryl Mitchell.
Adored by critics at the time, Galaxy Quest won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Nebula Award for Best Script. It was also nominated for ten Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Director for Parisot, Best Actress for Weaver, and Best Supporting Actor for Rickman, with Allen winning Best Actor. And in 2013 Star Trek fans voted it the seventh best Star Trek film of all time.
While it’s unclear if there would be a lot of interest in a Galaxy Quest series, the popularity of nostalgia in movies and television says that it will do well. Pegg and Pritchett can definitely be trusted to do the series justice, as they have an impressive list of credits between them.
Georgia Pritchett has written for Veep and The Thick Of It is the creator of Apple TV’s The Shrink Next Door starring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd. She also has some sci-fi comedy television experience, working with Armando Iannucci on HBO’s Avenue 5. This seems to make her quite a good fit for Galaxy Quest.
In addition to playing Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the three Star Trek films produced by J.J. Abrams, Simon Pegg’s writing skills have been featured in film and television. He went on to co-write and star in the Three Flavours Cornetto film trilogy: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. Along with Nick Frost, Pegg also wrote and starred in the sci-fi film Paul. He is the co-creator of the popular British sitcom Spaced.
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