'Battlestar's' final season expands; TV movie looking good

Source: Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune

As "Battlestar Galactica" gets ready to air its mid-season finale on Friday, there are two bits of good news to share regarding the show.

According to well-informed sources, it’s almost certain that at least one “Battlestar Galactica” TV movie will be made this year.

Here’s even better news: Up to two hours may be added to “Battlestar’s” final run of episodes.

You heard that right: The last leg of the show’s final season could expand to 12 hours, instead of the originally planned 10 hours.

As he discussed here, the show’s executive producer, Ronald D. Moore, wrote "Battlestar's" final episode, which could be up to three hours long (a wild guess here: Sci Fi probably wouldn’t air the whole thing in one night). Mary McDonnell described her reaction to the script this way: It filled her with "an incredible feeling of adrenaline,” she told Ain't It Cool News. “It made me understand the entire saga, and made me excited for all of you.”

As for when the final part of Season 4 will air, Moore has told TV Guide that it’s probably going to be in 2009. (Update: EOnline.com reports that the president of Sci Fi has said the last episodes will begin airing in the "first quarter" of 2009.)

Regarding the “Battlestar” TV movie, as "Razor" did, it will probably air on Sci Fi first then be released on DVD within days (the preceding sentence was updated with new information from a Sci Fi rep). There’s no word on who will be in the movie, what it will be about and when it will air. All of that is still to be determined.

In a previous story, I’d reported that up to three films were being considered. Whether the other two “Battlestar” TV movies will get made is an open question at this point, but it is possible, according to my sources and according to Galactica Sitrep (which also has wall-to-wall coverage of Wednesday’s screening of the mid-season finale at Los Angeles’ Cinerama Dome).

Stay tuned for more “Battlestar” thoughts: I’ll have a blog post up on Friday’s mid-season finale, “Revelations,” this weekend. (The photo above is of Katee Sackhoff as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace in "Revelations.")