Leapin’ Lizards! V Gets Rebooted
Los Angeles (E! Online) – Hide the hamsters…the Visitors are baaack!
Hoping to do for V what the Sci Fi Channel did for Battlestar Galactica, ABC has given the go-ahead on a reboot of the hit 1980s franchise about alien lizards from another planet who take over Earth.
Scott Peters, the brain behind The 4400, will write and executive produce the update with Warner Bros. TV, per Variety. Warners shepherded the 1983 NBC TV movie, its sequel and a standalone series that ran during the 1984-85 season.
The new version will completely revamp the original, including changing the allusions from the Holocaust to 9/11.
Original V mastermind Kenneth Johnson, the ¸ber-producer who also created The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk and Alien Nation, had previously tried to get a new V off the ground, but he is not involved in the new incarnation.
“I was convinced that V should be a movie,” he tells E! News. “I discovered that Warner controlled the TV rights. I, as the creator, own the motion picture rights to V. Virtually all the majors wanted to do it…and pay me a lot of money to write and produce a $200 million tentpole.”
Back in the ’80s, Johnson was shunted aside by NBC and Warners and had nothing to do with V: The Final Battle or the subsequent TV series, both of which failed to match the critical or commercial success of the original. Still smarting, he has been reluctant to hand over the reins to a movie version, preferring to do it himself.
Enter Peters.
“Warners felt they wanted to develop [a new TV project] and had Scott write a script. And now they announced they have a development deal with ABC for a potential pilot for a potential series. But that’s what it is, development for a potential,” says Johnson. “In the meantime, I’ve been trying to get V done the way I want it done so I can…make sure the integrity, quality and substance of the original is maintained.”
Should he manage to get financing for his big-screen vision, Johnson also has plans for a sequel, V: The Second Generation, which would pick up with Earth’s freedom fighters 20 years later and possibly feature castmembers from the 1980s edition, including Marc “Beastmaster” Singer and Faye Grant.
“It’d be a real treat for the fans and the cast of V to be reunited again,” says Johnson. “So that’s the game plan.”
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