‘Last Man Standing’ Star Tim Allen Gives Update on ‘Galaxy Quest’ Sequel

Last Man Standing star Tim Allen shared a positive update on the long-gestating sequel to Galaxy Quest, the 1999 cult science-fiction comedy he made with Sigourney Weaver and the late Alan Rickman. Fans have been hoping for a follow-up to the hilarious Star Trek parody, but the plans were paused after Rickman’s death in 2016. Last week, Allen said he has read the sequel’s script and he likes it.

“It’s a fabulous script, but it had a hiccup because the wonderful Alan Rickman passed,” Allen explained to Entertainment Weekly. “So it all got very sad and dark because [the script] was all about [Lazrus] and Taggart,” he said, referring to the characters they played. “It was all about their story. It doesn’t mean they can’t reboot the idea, and the underlying story was hysterical and fun.”

The former Home Improvement star said he has not spoken to anyone about the project recently, but he keeps in contact with his Galaxy Quest co-stars. “There is constantly a little flicker of a butane torch that we could reboot it with. Without giving too much away, a member of Alan’s Galaxy Quest family could step in and the idea would still work,” he told EW. He explained that the plot focuses on the NSEA Protector crew becoming out-of-sync with the rest of the world due to light-speed space travel time dilation.

The original Galaxy Quest was written by David Howard and Robert Gordon as a parody of the fandom that built up around Star Trek. Allen, Rickman, Weaver, Sam Rockwell, Tony Shalhoub, and Daryl Mitchel played actors who starred on a beloved sci-fi TV series like Star Trek. During a convention, Allen’s Jason Nesmith meets a group of fans who are really aliens who take the team to a recreation of the Protector bridge and believe they could help in their real-life predicament. The film was directed by Dean Parisot (Bill & Ted Face the Music) and was an instant hit with sci-fi fans, despite not being a big box office success.

Back in 2017, Amazon Studios and Paramount TV announced plans to develop a Galaxy Quest series, but nothing came of that. Recasting a role once played by an actor as beloved and talented as Rickman would be an insurmountable challenge, and members of the cast have mentioned that in past interviews about sequels. “We almost did it, but Alan passed away in the middle of it. And it still comes up every couple of months,” Parisot told Inverse. “I don’t know. Maybe. We better figure out how to do it without Alan.”

In 2016, after Rickman’s death, Allen said Galaxy Quest was “really close” to coming back in a “very creative way,” but he could not go into details. “It’s closer than I can tell you but I can’t say more than that,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. “The real kicker is that Alan now has to be left out. It’s been a big shock on many levels.”