Bryan Singer, director of the X-Men films and Valkyrie, has been hired by Universal to direct a Battlestar Galactica film. From Variety:

“Battlestar Galactica” appears to be on a fast track and sources said that Singer could be looking at a $10 million paycheck to sign on to the film.

Singer has long been intrigued with “Battlestar Galactica” and flirted with relaunching it into a TV series right after he directed the original “X-Men.” Back in 2001 I wrote about his plan, which involved teaming with Tom DeSanto to exec produce the series. Singer planned to direct the pilot of the new version of a series that originally launched on ABC in 1978 and ran two seasons.

It is possible that the timing of the series went awry because of the World Trade Center disaster that occurred later that year. Certainly, it made a series that launched with the attack and destruction of earth unpalatable.

I haven’t seen one single episode of Battlestar Galactica but I’m going to assume the recent success of Star Trek has had an influence on Universal’s decision to make the film. Here is the basic premise which all Battlestar Galactica projects have shared:

In a distant part of the universe, a civilization of humans lives on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies. In the past, the Colonies have been at war with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons. With the help of a human named Baltar, the Cylons launch a sudden ambush on the Colonies, laying waste to the planets and devastating their populations. The human survivors flee into space aboard any spacecraft they can reach. Of all the Colonial Fleet, the Battlestar Galactica appears to be the only military capital ship that survived the attack. Under the leadership of famed military leader Commander Adama, the Battlestar Galactica and its crew take up the task of leading the small fugitive fleet of survivors into space in search of a fabled refuge known as Earth.

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