Stop us if you’ve heard this one before…but “Farscape” is coming back.
Yes, “Farscape” creator Rockne S. O’Bannon has once again dangled red meat (this time, in the form of a movie script) in front of the small, but incredibly devoted fanbase who have spent a decade clamoring for a return of the 1999-2003 SciFi (before it was SyFy) series about an astronaut (Ben Browder) joining up with a crew of aliens and Muppets in a far-flung corner of the universe.
O’Bannon made the revelation at a showrunners panel at WonderCon over the weekend. As reported by Comic Book Resources and redistributed by Crave film site Cinema Blend, O’Bannon said: “We are, in fact, in the script stage of a ‘Farscape’ feature.”
Now, while that news should be enough to get Scapers really frelling psyched for the return of John Crichton and friends, it might serve the devotees to pump the brakes a bit — because we’ve heard resurrection talk fairly regularly over the past 11 years.
The cries of angry fans at the show’s cancellation (following a cliffhanger at the end of the series’ 4th and final season, no less) got Sci Fi to produce the four-hour miniseries “Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars” to wrap up the show’s dangling plot lines.
In 2007, O’Bannon announced a 10-episode set of “Farscape” webisodes that was supposed to appear online — but didn’t when financing fell through. Canonical “Farscape” stories appeared in BOOM’s various “Farscape” comic series between 2008 and 2011, but that also wasn’t enough to spawn a full on-screen comeback.
And O’Bannon himself cautioned fans that this new script, written by former series writer Justin Monjo, was still in the early development stages, so there are plenty of ways this new project could derail like previous attempts. But hopefully, this new script will finally be the key to getting “Farscape’s” fun and inventive universe of ideas and characters back in the public eye.
