One of the weird little upshots of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike is that we’ve been hearing a lot more from producers, directors, and (now that the WGA has wrapped up its own labor actions) writers when it comes time to give projects a promotional push. Hence Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail taking pride of place at the red carpet for his new Mahershala Ali and Julia Roberts movie Leave The World Behind at AFI tonight, where he fielded questions about the Obamas, his old pal Rami Malek, and, most interesting for all us mega-nerds, that Battlestar Galactica show he’s been developing for Peacock for more than four years at this point.
(Do you hear that, Sam? We’re not calling it a “reboot,” even though it remains wild to us that you’re apparently trying to get the revived version of the show going again 13 years after spin-off prequel Caprica dissolved in a final fizzle of cancellation.)
Anyway, Esmail would like everyone to know that the new Peacock show is currently in “great shape” in the aftermath of the writers strike, noting that he’s just recently been handed an outline for the series that is also “great.” (Esmail didn’t go into details about what the show would actually entail, of course, or, more crucially, when it might go from “great shape” into actual production; he’s developing the series with The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes writer Michael Lesslie, who will serve as a showrunner for the series.)
Of course, having to handle pretty much the whole red carpet himself, Esmail didn’t stick merely to this future show; he also talked about working with the Obamas, who produced Leave The World Behind—“They’re some of the most brilliant minds on the planet”—and on highter-ups deciding to pull the plug on his and Rami Malek’s latest team-up, an ambitious TV adaptation of classic sci-fi film Metropolis: “It was heartbreaking,” Esmail admitted, but “I got to work with a lot of really talented people out in Australia, where we were mounting the production. I don’t regret it for a second.”