The premise is simple: A group of aging actors, remembered mainly for their roles in a long-deceased space opera television series and living off their royalties and convention fees, are whisked away to space aliens who believe the show was real. Once there, the cast needs to play their roles for real in order to help their new allies defeat a reptilian warlord.
Ever since the film was released, fans have been lobbying for a sequel or, better yet, a TV series. There have been a number of false starts which have disappointed proponents of the idea, but they live up to the phrase “Never give up, never surrender!,” the catchphrase of Tim Allen’s character’s character on the show.
And now it seems their faith is about to pay off. According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount Television Studios is in the early development stages of a Galaxy Quest television show. The show will be helmed by Mark Johnson, the Executive Producer for the original film. The quest has begun for a writer to pair with him.
It’s way too early for there to be any cast announcements yet. The film starred Tim Allen (Home Imrovement), Sigourney Weaver (Alien), and Alan Rickman (the Harry Potter films), along with Tony Shalhoub (Monk) and Sam Rockwell (See How They Run). It seems unlikely that those actors will return to perform their original roles in a TV series nearly 25 years after the first time (although, given the success of Star Trek: Picard season 3, which sees the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast reunite, it could work), but could some of them make appearances in the series?
Alan Rickman, sadly, passed away after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2016, so he can’t be involved, but the rest of the main cast is still working. Perhaps we’ll see some of them in this new incarnation, assuming it moves ahead.
It makes a certain amount of sense for Paramount to have secured the rights to make the series.
The film itself was distributed by DreamWorks Pictures, but with every Star Trek series streaming on streaming service Paramount+, bringing Galaxy Quest into the fold to take advantage of the current Trek mania seems like a no-brainer. We’ll just have to wait and see if the project goes ahead as planned.
