After nearly a century since his first appearance in 1920s pulp magazines, the famed hero Buck Rogers will finally make his return to the big screen. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that, despite multiple years of legal disputes, veteran producer Don Murphy and his creative partner Susan Montford have obtained the screen rights for the iconic character, and under their Angry Films production banner, the two are developing a live-action “Buck Rogers” film for Legendary.
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The world was first introduced to Buck Rogers in a story titled “Armageddon 2419,” which was published in the famous pulp magazine “Amazing Stories” in 1928. The character is a sci-fi swashbuckling adventurer that would introduce readers to incredible ideas of what future technology would look like and what secrets space travel might reveal. Buck Rogers spawned a million imitators, including the likes of Flash Gordon.
Since then, Buck Rogers’ pervasive presence has been adapted, expanded, and imitated in various comic strips, radio plays, and even a Universal-produced film serial in 1939. To many, Buck Rogers was the blueprint for successful multi-media and multi-platform storytelling – and that’s what Murphy, Montford, and Legendary hope to achieve with this newest effort. Sci-fi TV fans might remember the classic series that ran for two seasons starting in 1979. Though maybe not the most faithful adaptation, the series has achieved cult classic status in the decades since its premiere.
According to the report, Legendary hopes to create an accompanying “prestige television series as well as an anime series,” which would create a multi-platform canon alongside the feature adaptation. Legendary has handled these lofty franchise efforts in the past, with “Godzilla,” “Kong: Skull Island,” the “Pacific Rim” films, and the upcoming “Dune.”
Murphy and Montford’s Angry Films is best known for Shawn Levy’s 2011 sci-fi flick “Real Steel.” Additionally, Murphy himself has produced all of the “Transformers” films, including “Bumblebee.”
With the lengthy rights disputes now coming to a close, Don Murphy, Susan Montford, and Legendary can begin attaching talent to the project.