Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ron Moore is set to bring his storytelling talents down to earth for a CBS reboot of The Wild Wild West. He and CSI executive producer Naren Shankar are negotiating with the network to develop a series that would draw inspiration from the gadget-laden TV Western that ran from 1965 to 1969, according to Deadline Hollywood.
Set after the Civil War, the remake would track the adventures of two Secret Service agents. The original featured action man James West (played by Robert Conrad) and inventor Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin) as adventurous protectors of the President Ulysses S. Grant. The pair traveled the country in a tricked-out train – see the original's animated title sequence above. The successful series spawned a mediocre big-screen remake in 1999 that starred Will Smith and Kevin Kline as the crime-fighting pair.
Coming off his failed Galactica prequel Caprica, Moore faces an intriguing challenge as he tackles the American frontier: Stripped of Battlestar Galactica's exotic extraterrestrial appeal, can he craft epic mythologies within the confines of a familiar genre setting?
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