It looks like one of the BBC’s most iconic cult sci-fi shows is getting a reboot, finally, after 45 years.
Yes, Emmy-nominated The Last of Us director Peter Hoar’s new production company, Multitude Productions, has set its sights on bringing back Blake’s 7 after snatching up the show’s rights (along with other shows) alongside A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder exec Matthew Bouch and West End producer Jason Haigh-Ellery.
Hoar, who plans to direct the series and hopes it goes back home to the BBC, announced the news, as i the way these days, on social media:
The original series, created by Daleks creator Terry Nation, ran for four years between 1978 and 1981 and had a total of 52 episodes but to this day it still comes up in discussions of best sci-fi shows ever made and has had its story continued in audio adventures, comics and books in the years in between.
The show followed Gareth Thomas’ Roj Blake whose crew are a bunch of rebels fighting the totalitarian Terran Federation that pretty much rules the galaxy… it’s Star Wars, Firefly, Doctor Who and The Magnificent Seven all rolled into one.
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Citing the runiation of Doctor Who by the BBC and Disney, Bouch said: “We’re driven by our passions but also seeing that there is a gap in the market in the UK – particularly with the well-publicized dropping off of Doctor Who – for genre-based British IP.
“We look back at when we were young with a degree of nostalgia but also thinking about the 70s and 80s as we were growing up and the amount of genre material that was available, whether it was Blake’s 7 or the Narnia adaptation. We are looking to the international market and seeing if there is a way of dovetailing that British low-budget sensibility with international markets. We know in the U.S. there’s a big contraction and we all need to think about finding ways to make things more economical.
“We’re very aware that it feels counterintuitive to launch something at this point but equally we feel there is a gap in the market in terms of what we are doing,” he added, “our expertise straddles both international and British lower budget material. Obviously the proof will be in the pudding.”
Multitude’s other acquisitions include Luke Rhinehart’s The Search for the Dice Man and Patrick Carman’s Skeleton Creek book series
In the third century of the second calendar, after the chaos of the intergalactic wars, a powerful dictatorship has risen to dynamic proportions and engulfed most of the populated worlds. Liberty has become a crime punishable by death, and the majority of the population lives in a drug-induced state of docility.
This tyrannical authority fulfils George Orwell’s prophecy of 1984 to its most terrifying extremes. This government is known as the Federation. Each world has its share of rebels who either turned to crime or the Resistance.
This is the story of one such group of rebels, led by a man named Blake. His group is largely composed of escaped convicts, thieves and smugglers, who are thrown together by chance.
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Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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