"Drive" Director To Bring Barbarella To The Small Screen

Fresh off of guiding Bryan Fuller's new series based on Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter books to a home at NBC, Gaumont International Television and producer Martha De Laurentiis are now gearing up to bring another memorable film character to the small screen.

Barbarella is a 1968 sci-fi film that stars Jane Fonda (at her absolute hottest) as a sexy siren that is tasked by the President Of Earth to stop an inventor's weapon from falling into the wrong hands and disrupting Earth's current state of peace. Or something like that. The film is really quite strange, and entire scenes seem to exist just to feature Fonda in increasing states of undress. Not that there is anything wrong with that. This was actually not the first appearance of Barbarella though, as the film was based on a French graphic novel by author Jean-Claude Forest.

Anyway, both the film and the character now sport a large cult following, and Gaumont figures that now is as good a time as any to bring Barbarella back. Legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis (husband to the aforementioned Martha) was actually working on a theatrical remake of the film in the late '00s, but the project was shelved when he died in 2010.

While no actors have been cast yet, we do know that Nicolas Winding Refn (director of well regarded films like Drive and Bronson) has signed on to both direct and executive produce the show. Refn is said to be a big fan of Barbarella, referring to her as "one of the ultimate counter-cultural characters".

Gaumont CEO Katie O'Connell also had this to say - "We are thrilled to have secured the rights from the Forest estate and are thrilled to be pairing the bold visceral style of Nicolas Refn with the pop culture icon Barbarella."

Would you watch a Barbarella TV series? Who should be cast in the lead role?

Source: Deadline.com