Not the worst IP proposal for a universe we've seen recently (remind me to talk about the return of Atlas Comics), but probably the most embarrassing to come out of a major production house (Legendary is the company behind, among other things, Dune).
From Reactor:
Akiva Goldsman, the writer and producer involved with myriad film and TV projects including the recent Star Trek shows, Doctor Sleep, I, Robot, and Batman & Robin, is setting his eyes toward Irwin Allen’s 1960s sci-fi television shows Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and The Time Tunnel.
According to Deadline, Goldsman is working with Legendary Television to create “a unified vision for these stories, bringing modern sensibilities to their timeless appeal, and expanding upon his success in revitalizing the Star Trek universe.”
For those of you who have not wasted large parts of your lives watching second-rate movies on bad television, Irwin Allen was a producer mainly active in the '60s and '70s. He became famous for producing a string of disaster films, starting with The Poseidon Adventure—probably his best film—and The Towering Inferno. Today, however, he is best known for producing Lost in Space, a show that is largely remembered because a guest star, Jonathan Harris, decided to start rewriting his lines in a successful effort to avoid being written out of the show. (Harris's account has been confirmed by numerous sources, including his co-star Billy Mumy.)
Lost in Space was the second of four science fiction shows Allen produced in the '60s, the other three being Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (based on a profoundly silly but successful feature film that Allen produced and directed), The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. The shows were not, by any standard, a "universe," but thanks to Allen's heavy recycling of sets, props, and costumes—and his already notorious overreliance on stock footage—they all tended to look the same.
The drive to accumulate intellectual property with any name recognition whatsoever has been going on for decades, particularly on the part of Disney and Warner Bros. This kicked into even higher gear with the emergence of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for at least a few reasons. First, of course, were the billion-dollar-plus box office takes of these movies. Perhaps more importantly, though, it showed that lesser IP could be turned into major franchises. (Characters like Iron Man and Thor were decidedly second-tier before the MCU made them stars. The only reason Marvel gave them a chance was because the company had previously sold off the rights to their biggest names—the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Spider-Man.) Finally, the "universe" approach offered incredible opportunities for synergy. The critical and commercial success of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica added to the excitement.
So far, no attempt to recapture that magic has succeeded. DC has had decidedly mixed results. The Universal MonsterVerse basically died in its crib. The attempt to tie all of the Bond films together with Spectre got an overwhelmingly hostile reaction. Even Marvel has stumbled trying to come up with a second act after the Infinity Saga. Nonetheless, studios continue to dig up properties that are more and more obscure—and less and less suitable for revival.
The non-Lost in Space Irwin Allen shows are around 60 years old and were largely forgotten by the end of the decade. There are no plot elements or characters that lend themselves to adaptation, nor is there anything about the shows that suggests they should share a common universe.
Is it possible to make a hit, even a hit that also happens to be a genuinely good piece of work? Of course it is. Have talented people in front of and behind the cameras saved studios from the consequences of bad executive decisions? Countless times. But make no mistake, that sound you hear in the background when you read a story about someone acquiring an increasingly obscure piece of IP is the scraping of the bottom of the barrel.
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