Universal Pictures’ upcoming Battlestar Galactica feature film has found another key crew member. The studio has recruited Jay Basu to rewrite a script from Westworld co-creator and Burn Notice scribe Lisa Joy, bringing the long-gestating project one step closer to the big screen.
The movie will be a “reimagining” of Glen A. Larson’s original 1970s television series, The Wrap reports, and not a sequel to or a remake of Ronald D. Moore’s mid-’00s reboot series. Francis Lawrence, the man behind I Am Legend, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, and the Jennifer Lawrence spy thriller Red Sparrow is on tap to direct.
Basu’s other credits include Lisbeth Salander’s latest adventure, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Elizabeth Banks’ upcoming Charlie’s Angels remake, and a Labyrinth spin-off that will continue the story that began in Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy flick.
Universal Pictures has been trying to get a Battlestar Galactica film off of the ground since at least 2011 when director Bryan Singer and writer Jon Orloff announced that they’d be steering the reboot. Neither individual seems to be attached to the film’s most current iteration.
Battlestar Galactica first hit the airwaves in 1978, as Larson, Universal Television, and ABC tried to capitalize on the growing Star Wars craze. The show focused on the crew of the eponymous starship as it led the last remnants of humanity through space on a quest to escape the murderous robots known as the Cylons and find Earth, mankind’s mythical homeworld.
While Battlestar Galactica launched to respectable ratings and went on to become a cult favorite, it came with a high price tag — episodes reportedly cost $1 million each to produce, over twice as much as the average television episode at the time — and quickly fell victim to CBS’ popular comedy All in the Family, which aired against it. ABC canceled Battlestar Galactica after a single season, while 20th Century Fox sued Universal over Battlestar‘s similarities to Star Wars, which came out roughly a year earlier (the case was ultimately settled out of court). A sequel series, Galactica 1980, lasted a mere 10 episodes.
Moore’s take on the property fared better. Starting with a three-hour miniseries that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy) in 2003, the revitalized Battlestar Galactica lasted for four seasons. While die-hard fans initially resisted Moore’s changes to the original source material, the show went on to become a critical hit, launching a franchise that included the prequel series Caprica and the web series Blood & Chrome — not to mention of the most controversial series finales of all time.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.