Sam Rockwell Says Simon Pegg Is Helping Out With GALAXY QUEST Sequel Project
Over the years, there’s been talk of both a Galaxy Quest 2 movie and a sequel series. Fans would love to see the Galaxy Quest story continue in some way. The first movie was just so much damn fun, and it’s so crazy to me that it’s taking so long to get something going.
One of the last updates we had on this was that Paramount+ was developing a Galaxy Quest series. Prior to that, a sequel series got very close to happening at at Amazon, but after Alan Rickman passed away, it fell apart.
Now, during a recent interview with GQ, Sam Rockwell offered a brief but interesting update. He revealed that Simon Pegg was helping out with the project! His complete quote reads:
"If there was a sequel to Galaxy Quest, we would be on it. We talked about it maybe like a limited series, yeah. Simon Pegg talked about helping out with it, actually."
Pegg would make the perfect addition to the creative team for a series like this. So, if it ever happened, it would be great to see hi involved.
Then there’s Tim Allen who has constantly been pushing hard to a sequel off the ground. He previously said, "Consistently, this crew and everybody else with Galaxy Quest has been fighting to do this 'moments later' when the Thermians come back. We literally just talked about this yesterday, a group of us here, and we don't know why [it hasn't happened]. There's been a script and our friend Alan Rickman passed away, so that script involving he and I in the whole story disappeared. The story itself was so clever and so fun. I love that crew and I love everything about Galaxy Quest."
Original director Dean Parisot and co-writer Robert Gordon were developing the sequel that Allen is talking about, and that story would have focused on the relationship of Allen’s character Jason Nesmith, aka Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, and Rickman’s Alexander Dane, aka Dr. Lazarus. Allen previously said:
“It’s a fabulous script. But it had a hiccup because the wonderful Alan Rickman passed. So it all got very sad and dark because [the script] was all about [Lazarus] and Taggart. It was all about their story. It doesn’t mean they can’t reboot the idea, and the underlying story was hysterical and fun.”
He went on to share that the plot of the sequel also revolved around light-speed space travel, and it would find the crew out-of-sync with the rest of the planet:
“[The sequel] could happen now or in five years and it doesn’t matter at all because when you travel at light speed, when you come back it can be like only 20 minutes, but 20 years have passed, right? That part is wonderful for the sci-fi freak in me. But right now it’s in a holding pattern.”
Sigourney Weaver also previously talked about the status of the sequel saying:
"We lost the wonderful Alan [Rickman] unexpectedly, so that was put in mothballs, but I think they are finally now reviving it. It will be the story of the old ancient Galaxy Questers being brought into this series with another young cast. haven't read them, so I don't know the details, but I think that everyone in Galaxy Quest would love to participate because it was such a wonderful experience for us. How they will find someone to play Alan's part, don't know, but I think that they have a very good idea of who to do it. He's irreplaceable, eternally. I think there may be good news on that front, but I haven't heard about it in these six months, so when it's gonna happen, I'm not sure."
As for the series that was being developed for Amazon at one point, it would have continued the story of the lovable characters from the movie. It would have also involved two separate sets of characters whose adventures will come together as their stories play out in the series. Writer Paul Scheer explained:
“I’m excited about it. It’s a bigger idea that’s kind of morphed and changed a little bit. Not much. The thing I keep on saying about it, without giving too much away – because it’s going to be so long before people get to see it, I don’t want people to get too burnt out on me telling you what it’s about before it gets to that point – but for me, it was really important to do service to a Galaxy Quest story that gives you everything that you want and indoctrinates people who have never seen Galaxy Quest into what the fun of that world is. That Tropic Thunder, Galaxy Quest world. And also to continue the story of our original characters and have consequences from the first film.
So it is mixing two casts. It’s separate kind of adventures that kind of merge, and I’m looking at this first season not as episodic, but as a serialized story. So, the only way I’ve been looking at it is, using everything from the first movie and making the reasons for everything not just – I want to avoid anything that could be viewed as a reboot for reboot’s sake. There are real reasons behind these choices – maybe too much so.”
Do you think that Galaxy Quest will ever get a sequel series or film?