Sigourney Weaver Knows Why There Wasn’t a ‘Galaxy Quest’ Sequel

Paul Scheer is one of my favorite people. I had seen him in movies and TV shows before I realized who he was, but The League and How Did This Get Made? changed all of that. The show and podcast were in heavy rotation for my television and podcast consumption (the latter still is) and caused me to follow Paul to other projects. He’s great, he’s funny, and he’s a big old nerd. So, when I heard that he would be writing a Galaxy Quest sequel series, it sounded like a match made in heaven.

Scheer took over writing duties on the show, wanting to do for Galaxy Quest what The Force Awakens did for Star Wars. It’s a solid pitch, and I’m somewhat surprised that it never moved forward. Not only has there been a deluge of lega-sequels based on IP, but a lot of the shows and movies being revived don’t have anywhere near the cultural impact of Galaxy Quest. Regardless, Scheer’s show never came to pass, and there was more standing in the way than just development hell.

Sigourney Weaver, one of the stars of the film, recently chatted with Variety because she’s an integral part of James Cameron’s Avatar franchise. In her discussion with the outlet, they touched on Galaxy Quest, with Weaver explaining that a gigantic loss put the brakes on continuing the story. “[Co-writer] Bob Gordon had written a second one, and he wouldn’t give it to DreamWorks because he just felt they’d missed the boat on ours,” she noted. “And so we always meant to do a sequel, and then with Alan passing away, we just lost heart. But it was a great privilege to do this love letter to actors.”

Alan Rickman’s performance as Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus is one of the highlights of the original film. His character was a classically trained actor who resented having his career dominated by the campy sci-fi show on which he was a cast member. However, he eventually comes around to the whole experience due to the death of one of the aliens who asked Dane and his former co-stars for help. Weaver is not exaggerating when she says he was the heart of the film, and not moving forward without him makes a lot of sense.

That doesn’t mean Paramount, which owns the film, hasn’t tried to move forward. Regardless, it hasn’t happened, but there is still something we could see if Weaver has her druthers, and it involves Rickman. “I wish they put out a director’s cut of the movie because, at the last minute, DreamWorks decided to release the movie with some of the more sophisticated scenes cut that Alan was in because it needed a kids’ movie to go up against [Columbia Pictures’] Stuart Little,” Weaver explained. “And why they don’t put out the movie again with more of his very, very strange and wonderful scenes?”

A director’s cut seems more likely than a sequel at this point, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for either. It’s more likely that we’d see a complete reboot. Or, we could see things get even more meta. A new Star Trek film is in the works from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the writing and directing duo behind films like Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Given that Star Trek is the basis for Galaxy Quest, and the duo taking over does more comedy, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Star Trek film that acknowledges there is a show based on its crusades.