Sigourney Weaver is urging DreamWorks to release a director’s cut of the 1999 sci-fi comedy “Galaxy Quest,” saying studio edits removed some of Alan Rickman’s most memorable moments. In a Vanity Fair video interview published this week, Weaver said she wished the film could be reissued “with more of his very, very strange and wonderful scenes,” calling the idea a tribute to the late actor.
Weaver linked the push to an abandoned sequel. She said co-writer Robert Gordon drafted a follow-up, then refused to turn it over after the original movie was reworked for a kid-friendly rating. “Bob Gordon had written a second one, and he wouldn’t give it to DreamWorks,” she said. “We always meant to do a sequel. And then with Alan passing away, we just lost heart.” Rickman died of pancreatic cancer in 2016.
The comments revive a long-running argument about how “Galaxy Quest” was shaped in post-production. In the 2019 documentary “Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary,” crew members described a late shift toward a family release after other PG and G hits reshaped studio expectations. Visual effects supervisor Bill George called “Rugrats the Movie” “the darkest day” for the project, saying it triggered pressure to tone down content.
Talk of a sequel has never fully gone away. Weaver told a New York Comic Con panel in October that one proposed version even floated Benedict Cumberbatch playing a character linked to Rickman’s role, a detail that underscored how hard it was to imagine the story without him.
Not everyone wants the franchise revived. In a 2014 interview, actor Enrico Colantoni said he hoped a continuation would not happen, warning that a follow-up made “just because we love those characters” could turn into “the awful sequel.”
Studios have not announced plans for an expanded cut, and rights and archival work can complicate any new version. Interest in new “Galaxy Quest” material has shifted to television: Paramount+ announced development of a series adaptation in 2023, and the project’s fate now sits inside a reorganized company after Skydance and Paramount completed their merger in August.
