It’s been over half a year since we heard anything new about the Battlestar Galactica reboot series on Peacock. But Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail has given Collider an update about the series’ status. It doesn’t sound like the project is out of the pilot stage yet. However, Esmail reiterated that it will not trample on the story told by Ronald D. Moore’s 2004 Battlestar Galactica revival.
“We’re still working on the pilot,” said Esmail. “Look, it’s a big universe, it’s a big world, I want to respect the Ronald Moore Battlestar. 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. Which I think we both wanted.”
“It’s still in the early phases of trying to figure out the world via the pilot,” added Esmail. “I think we’ve got the basic construction of the type of story we want to tell, the part of mythology that we’re gonna explore – because Battlestar does have a rich mythology and again I have to give Ron a lot of credit for that – and so now we’re sort of closing in on what that pilot’s gonna look like.”
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Intriguingly, Esmail also suggested that the new iteration of Battlestar Galactica will do away with the conventional episodic release schedule.
“The one thing we got excited by is do we release an episode a week, [release all at once]?,” related Esmail. “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 also told Collider that this approach meant that he can’t really estimate how many episodes it will entail.
“I can’t tell you the number of episodes, but it’s also kind of a little meaningless because I think we’re gonna look at it as sort of like a spider web where we can plot and point and say, ‘Well this isn’t chronologically after Episode 1 or Episode 2, it’s the backstory of someone, but let’s release that so audiences can check that out if they want or they can just jump into the battle sequence’,” said Esmail. “We’re really gonna experiment with form in that way, and again I think with a property like Battlestar it lends to that.”
Michael Lesslie is writing and showrunning the new Battlestar Galactica series. Esmail will serve as an executive producer. Peacock hasn’t set a date for the series to begin filming yet.
What do you think about Esmail’s approach to Battlestar Galactica‘s episodes? Let us know in the comment section below!
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