Red Dwarf: The stage show?

New plans for unused movie script

The long-planned Red Dwarf movie could eventually become an animation – or even a stage show.

Series creator Doug Naylor has written 36 drafts of a feature-film screenplay, but the idea has never made it to the screen because of a lack of money.

So instead of letting all the work go to waste, he has revealed other plans for the script.

‘Basically, what I don’t want to happen is for Red Dwarf: The Movie never to be seen. Because that’s just bloody stupid,’ he said.

‘We have done a lot of work on it, and it would have been a great movie. So it’s, “Okay, what are the options?”

‘One option is the stage show, one option is an animated movie… and in some ways, maybe that would be more attractive to financiers because you could even, if they wanted, dangle the carrot of being able to revoice it into Bulgarian or Romanian or whatever… if that was a way they wanted to go.

‘But we haven’t actually decided which way we’re going to go.’

In the interview with Red Dwarf fan site Gannymede and Titan, Naylor blamed the BBC for the film’s financing problems

He said the corporation would not agree to buy the rights to air the movie on TV, which does not fill would-be investors with confidence.

‘The last time it fell out was because the BBC wouldn’t give us a TV deal,’ he said. ‘So everyone then goes “Well, why? This series has been really successful, there must be something wrong with it if they don’t want to buy it”.

‘And [the BBC’s] stance on it is that they won’t buy individual movies, and they aren’t prepared to make an exception with something like Red Dwarf. ’

Naylor also revealed that he was in talks with an animation company for a possible new Red Dwarf TV series without live actors, although he did not reveal any more details. Clips from the existing BBC shows have recently been remade as animations for mobile phone downloads.

Click here for the full interview

Published: 17 Dec 2007

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