Flash Gordon Rights Secured

By Reggie's Take on April 23, 2014

Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take Twentieth Century Fox’s rights to Flash Gordon, to be a better movie?

In Hollywood’s era of rebooting movies you can now add Flash Gordon to that list. Twentieth Century Fox has secured the rights to Flash Gordon from Hearst Entertainment.

Flash Gordon has been around since 1934 when iconic artist Alex Raymond first created the character. In 1980 the cheesy and colorful Flash Gordon movie with a soundtrack by Queen and a cast that included Timothy Dalton, Max von Sydow and Chaim Topol. Sam Jones played Gordon.

John Davis who spent over a year trying to get the rights from the Hearst Corporation will produce the reboot. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, who have been writing Star Trek 3, will be brought on board to pen the script.

No official word as to the tone of the movie or in what direction the story line may take. One would hope Fox would take a more serious maybe even darker tone with this new version of Flash Gordon.

With the reboot of Star Trek and a new trilogy for Star Wars on the horizon Fox has an opportunity, if done right, to turn Flash Gordon into a franchise as there’s plenty of source material to explore.

Flash Gordon / 1980

Flash Gordon a 1980 science fiction film and was directed by Mike Hodges.

It stared: Sam J. Jones, Melody Anderson, Topol, Max von Sydow, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed and Ornella Muti.

The film was more notable for its soundtrack composed, performed and produced by the rock band Queen.

1980 Film Synopsis:
Flash Gordon is an American football player who along with Dale Arden are returning to New York City after a long vacation, until the plane they are passengers on crashes into the laboratory of Russian scientist Dr. Hans Zarkov. Both Flash and Dale become unwilling passengers on-board Zarkov’s rocketship as Zarkov sets a course for the planet Mongo.

Arriving on Mongo, Flash and his companions find the planet is under the rulership of the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless and Ming is attacking Earth with natural disasters as he bids to destroy Earth. Realizing that Earth and the human race is in mortal danger, Flash decides to unite the kingdoms of Mongo and combine the forces of rivals Prince Barin and Prince Vultan to rescue Dale, who is to become Ming’s wife and defeat Ming and save Earth from annihilation.