Paul Scheer says his Galaxy Quest TV show will be "what The Force Awakens is to Star Wars"
There’s something almost delightfully disposable about 1999's Galaxy Quest, the light, breezy Star Trek pastiche that seems strategically designed to pop back into your head every three years with a cheerful, “Oh, yeah, Galaxy Quest! Alan Rickman’s great in that!” (He is.) It does not, consequently, feel like anything that requires “this kind of thing that feels like this epic sequel,” but that’s what the movie is apparently getting, per Amazon and Galaxy Quest TV series mastermind Paul Scheer.
Scheer recently described his TV adaptation of the film—currently on hold after its champion at Paramount TV, president Amy Powell, was recently fired—as a “continuation” of the adventures of the crew of the NSEA Protector. “I compared it to what The Force Awakens is to Star Wars,” he said during a recent interview. From later comments, we can assume Scheer meant that in the “mix of new characters and older, familiar ones” sense, and not “We’re going to repeat the plot of the first one, but with a slightly bigger, more ridiculous threat.”
Scheer seems confident that the show will eventually move forward as part of Amazon’s streaming library, although he’s yet to confirm whether any of the film’s original cast—which includes Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, Daryl Mitchell, and Sam Rockwell—would be back for the sequel. He’s previously said that the series will be a mix of old and new characters, with an eye on the cultural resurgence of public geekery in the 19 years since the film came out.