Celebrated comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan is on board to pen the script for a Buck Rogers television series courtesy of Legendary Entertainment. Vaughan’s involvement comes just two months after the studio first revealed their intentions to turn the sci-fi icon into a modern-day franchise, with plans reportedly in place for Buck Rogers to span both the big and small screen.
Don Murphy and Susan Montford, both of whom are producers of the Transformers franchise, are on board to produce the Buck Rogers series through their Angry Films banner. Flint Dille, the grandson of Buck Rogers creator Philip Francis Nowlan, is also on board as a producer. There is no word yet on who the studio is looking at to play the title character.
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Created way, way back in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., Buck Rogers has since appeared across multiple media, including comic book strips, movies, and TV series’. A veteran of the first World War, also known as The Great War, Buck Rogers begins working for the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, where he investigates reports of unusual phenomena in abandoned coal mines near Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. On one of these explorations, a sudden cave-in buries Rogers, exposing him to radioactive gas. Rogers falls into “a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of catabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on physical or mental faculties,” and remains in this state for 492 years, before awakening in the year 2419.
While the popular 1970s series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century starring Gil Gerard as Captain William “Buck” Rogers made some changes here and there to the characters origin, the basics generally remained the same, with the new series expected to follow a similar plot.
As for Buck Rogers, Legendary are reportedly hoping to spawn something similar to director Denis Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel, Dune, with both of these iconic works set to span movies, television, and even animated series. Incidentally, a Buck Rogers anime series is already in the works.
Since the characters debut in 1928, Buck Rogers has changed the science fiction landscape forever, and it should prove interesting to see how Vaughan approaches the material for the modern age. The news of Brian K. Vaughan’s involvement in the Buck Rogers series comes to us courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter.
