By Ben Pearson/Dec. 10, 2020 11:00 am EST
The Hollywood Reporter says that Legendary TV has hired Brian K. Vaughan to write a Buck Rogers TV series, which is just one cog in the company’s larger plans to jump-start that franchise in multiple forms, including a “prestige television series, a feature film and an anime series.” Don Murphy and Susan Montford (Transformers, Real Steel) will produce through their Angry Films production company, as will Flint Dille, the grandson of original Buck Rogers creator Philip Francis Nowlan.
Buck Rogers first appeared in Amazing Stories back in 1928, and eventually became a cross-platform superstar before that term was even a thing: he had his own radio show, film serial, TV series, and more. In those stories, the character is a man living in the 1900s who is knocked out in an abandoned mine, only to wake up in the year 2419 A.D. He became an iconic space explorer and action/adventure character, eventually inspiring the Daffy Duck Looney Tunes riff “Duck Dodgers,” which featured Daffy as a hapless adventurer.
He knows how to write successful stories in the sci-fi space; he was also a writer/producer on Lost (he was instrumental in the show’s excellent time travel period in seasons 3-5) and served as the showrunner of the CBS series Under the Dome. He has won 14 Eisner Awards, 14 Harvey Awards, and a Hugo Award for his writing, and I’d rank him among the best writers working in the industry today. Last year, Vaughan was tapped to write the script for a live-action Gundam movie, adapting the mega-popular mecha anime franchise for the big screen.
