LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As he set off for a galaxy far, far-off to make the most recent Star Wars” movie, director J.J. Abrams seemed past the sci-fi saga’s previous films for inspiration.
Based on the film The Magnificent Seven, Corman’s movie follows the same plot, only this time in space as a group of mercenaries are hired to guard a planet from conquering house raiders. In December Universal attempted to revive their different space opera property. The movement picture version of Flash Gordon was a extremely stylized and intentionally campy model produced by Dino De Laurentiis. The lawsuit with 20th Century Fox over Battlestar Galactica was still within the courts, so Universal needed the film to look nothing like Star Wars, they usually succeeded. Suffering from it’s campy script, and a number of other years of Flash Gordon serials condensed into the plot of a single film, Flash Gordon was an costly flop. Plans to turn it right into a franchise ended when Universal formally canceled pre-manufacturing on Flash Gordon II.
Filmation took an concept that they had for a pending cartoon and retooled it as a stay action Saturday morning show Space Academy which was adopted a year later with a spin off sequence Jason of Star Command. Filmation was capable of get this present on the air inside a couple of months of Star Wars, premiering on September tenth of 1977. They did so utilizing extremely low-cost particular effects and re-purposed units and costumes from an earlier Filmation collection, Ark II. There was additionally some stunt casting. Space Academy had Jonathan Harris from Lost in Space as the commander, while the commander on Jason of Star Command was James Doohan from Star Trek.
What was missing right here was a components. What have been Spielberg and Lucas doing that the remainder of the industry was not? Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were all fully completely different from each other. The solely factor they did have in widespread was particular effects. So studios started releasing a slew of huge funds fantasy films, some which failed miserably, others which had phenomenal success, and the summer blockbuster occasion movie was born. While you’d think each movie studio would have jumped onto the Star Wars bandwagon and instantly started work on their own area opera franchise, this was not the case. At essentially the most only about 15 Star Wars inspired films had been made worldwide previous to the discharge of it’s sequel The Empire Strikes Back ( 1980 ). There have been two causes for this. One was Close Encounters.. being released on the heels of Star Warsand doing nearly as effectively on the box office. The other was that just a 12 months previous to Star Wars, M.G.M. had launched it is personal big finances science fiction film, Logan’s Run ( 1976 ) which solely did modest enterprise at $25 million.
Battlestar Galactica was simply to costly a sequence to supply. It needed spectacular rankings for ABC to continue to afford paying for it’s production, and while it continued to do properly, it simply did not do properly sufficient. Millions of viewers were lost when CBS counter programmed their hit show All in the Family towards it. In addition, Universal was trying to abandon the sequence. After making a lot of money by releasing the pilot episode as a stand alone film abroad, Universal Immediately edited together two more episodes and created a second movie to be proven in the overseas market, Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack.