George Clooney Will Star In and Produce New ‘Buck Rogers’ Series
Many lifetimes ago, way back in the 20th century, George Clooney was a TV star. His big break in Hollywood came as hunky doctor Doug Ross on the first five seasons of ER. From there, he moved on to movies and he never looked back, apart from the occasional cameo or guest spot. But now Clooney is returning to TV, where he’s going to executive produce and potentially star in a new adaptation of the classic pulp hero Buck Rogers for Legendary Entertainment.
TheWrap has further details, which is being written by Lost writer (and Y: The Last Man creator) Brian K. Vaughn:
The project is based on the characters and concepts introduced in the 1928 novella “Armageddon 2419 A.D.” novella by Philip Francis Nowlan. The story followed “Anthony Rogers,” a mining engineer from the 20th century who awakens from suspended animation after 500 years to find himself in the middle of a planetary war.
After first appearing in short stories and comics, Buck Rogers later became a radio star, and also got his own film serial and early TV series on ABC. In the sci-fi boom that followed the first Star Wars, he also got another TV series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which aired for two seasons and starred Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers. Clooney himself just made a sci-fi movie that he both starred in and directed, The Midnight Sky, which is currently available on Netflix.
Although the character maintains a lot of name recognition — partly because he was spoofed in the beoved series of Daffy Duck cartoons, Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century — he hasn’t been popular in a long time. That should give Vaughn, Clooney, and company a lot of leeway in terms of developing a new take on the material. As long as the dude goes by the name Buck and it’s vaguely futuristic, they should be fine to do whatever else they want.
Gallery — The Best Sci-Fi Movie Posters in History: