'Buck Rogers' TV Series To Be Written By 'Lost' Veteran And Beloved Comic Book Writer Brian K. Vaughan
Hollywood has been trying to adapt the classic science fiction pulp hero Buck Rogers into a film or TV show for more than a decade, and it seems like it's finally going to happen. A new report says Brian K. Vaughan, the writer of comic books like Y: The Last Man and Saga, will be writing a Buck Rogers TV series for Legendary.
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.
Vaughan is the award-winning writer behind comics like Y: The Last Man, which is finally being adapted for television after years of starts and stops; Marvel's Runaways, which was adapted into a Hulu show; Paper Girls, which is getting the TV treatment at Amazon soon; Ex Machina, which is being adapted for film under the new title of The Great Machine; and Saga, a sprawling science fiction epic which may feature his best work on the page (and that's saying something).
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.