BSG & DVD

In the midst of working with Lee Thomson to get the comments working, our good friend Denis McGrath sent me an email about the rumours of a BATTLESTAR GALACTICA DVD Premiere movie to be shot on hiatus next year.

You can read about it here.

You can read some of the fannish comments here.

I think that this is a great move for BSG and makes a lot of sense, not only from a business sense but from a production sense as well. It follows a production philosophy that goes all the way back to Hitchcock and PSYCHO (which was produced by his TV series crew and not his more expensive film crew.)

DVD has been a MAJOR component to the success of BSG. It is no fluke that the DVD sets come out during the hiatus between the series. It essentially finances the whole show and brings it into the black very quickly.

A DVD Premiere movie reinforces the franchise itself and would be a great lead-in to the new series CAPRICA. It could be produced by the television crew with the standing sets and cast , supplemented by a few other (affordable) names.

And this isn't new territory either, BABYLON 5 has already produced quite a few made-for-cable movies. They're shooting a new one right now (in Vancouver no less) directed by B5 creator JM Strazcynski himself.

If this goes forward it will be a good thing for BSG and a great thing for the industry. If successful, it could blow the doors off a whole new arena of production. Instead of just the occasional DVDP of DUKES OF HAZZARD or SPECIES, they could be creating a whole new unit - the DVDP unit of TV series movies.

I'm wondering if the features will be written by the writer's room of the regular series?

And as I've said before, this will lead to a DVDP series.