Galaxy Quest

But the movie is in “a holding pattern.”

It was almost two years ago that Amazon landed the potential Galaxy Quest TV series, which hit an understandable snag with the passing of star Alan Rickman. Now, Amazon has decided never to give up or surrender, hiring comedian Paul Scheer to rework a new TV take on the Star Trek spoof.

As if we didn’t have enough reason to be bummed about the death of Alan Rickman, the magnficent star of Die Hard, Dogma, and the Harry Potter series. On a recent episode of the Nerdist podcast, Sam Rockwell says that we almost got a Galaxy Quest sequel, but the plan was squashed by Rickman’s death.

This morning’s big Oscar nominations announcement had to contend with an even more major and affecting piece of breaking news. A few days after David Bowie passed into the next dimension, cancer has taken another sixty-nine-year-old Brit from us: esteemed actor Alan Rickman. Flip to the word “arch” in the newest editions of the Oxford Goes To Hollywood dictionary, and there you’ll find a photo of Rickman, single eyebrow raised, his tone of dour bemusement audible even from the printed page. The man gained the most international recognition from a choice role in a certain franchise about a boy wizard, but he was an actor of boundless versatility who gifted audiences plenty of fond moviegoing memories.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Amazon has begun preliminary discussions toward adapting the series, without an official pilot order as of yet. It remains unclear if the TV take would look to incorporate cast members the likes of Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub and Justin Long, or more likely, reboot the franchise overall.

Just when we thought that the TV-movie reboot trend had given way to straight-up resuscitating old series, in swoops Galaxy Quest for a bit of meta fun. The 1999 Tim Allen sci-fi comedy has officially been targeted for a TV adaptation from Paramount, bringing the crew of the NSEA Protector out of mothballs once again.