New Battlestar Galactica Movie Will Exist in "Shared Universe" With TV Reboot

The next few years could potentially be significant for Battlestar Galactica fans, with both a film and TV reboot of the iconic science fiction franchise currently in the works. Updates surrounding the film adaptation have been few and far between since it was first announced in 2020, outside of the fact that Simon Kinberg will be writing and producing the project. In a recent interview with Collider, Kinberg spoke about the relationship between the two new extensions to the Battlestar franchise, and indicated that both the movie and the TV series, which is being spearheaded by Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail, will exist within a shared universe.

"In terms of the situation with Sam and the show, I can't say too much about it other than there is synergy between the two enterprises and constant communication between us," Kinberg revealed. "We've become close and been having a really good time together and there will be, for lack of a better phrase and it's an overused phrase, a shared universe."

"We are in the process of going out to directors and the hope is to attach a director and start prepping the movie this year," Kinberg said later on in the interview. "It's a megillah, humongous film and the prep will be a very long prep period so I would imagine even if we attached a director today it would take six, nine months to prep this movie properly. So at the earliest, we'd be shooting at the end of this year. We'd probably be shooting at the beginning of next year. Time will tell who the director is and then you or someone else will tell who the director is."

The Battlestar TV adaptation is being produced by Esmail for NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service, and was previously set to be showrun by Michael Lesslie, whose work includes Assassin's Creed and The Little Drummer Girl.

"One of the reasons I even wanted to do Battlestar, was that the way Ron Moore, what he did with his remake in the early 2000s where it was this sort of hard sci-fi series with lots of action set pieces and really this exciting sci-fi adventure but purely grounded in an allegory of what was going on at the time, which was post-9/11," Esmail explained in a 2020 interview. "And it wasn't that subtle, the links, I would say. But because he was also attuned to the sci-fi nature of the show, you didn't feel it."

"When I was approached to do Battlestar now, it has to have that same sort of dynamic. It can't be just a retread of what he already did so masterfully back then," Esmail continued. "What are we saying about today's world? And Mike just had this great take, and I'm not going to go into it because obviously, I don't want to spoil it for fans, but you kind of see it a little bit in Little Drummer Girl where politics plays a big part in it but without compromising the entertainment value, because in my opinion, you've got to have that. That's number one priority. I want people to be excited and emotionally invested and on a thrill-ride but at the same time I think Mike is going to bring a lot of depth and sort of parallel and mirror what's going on in the world right now."