Nu Image gets 'Buck Rogers' rights

Avi Lerner will shop property to studios

By MICHAEL FLEMING

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Nu Image/Millennium Films has acquired film rights to "Buck Rogers," and will give live action screen treatment to the venerable pilot who awakens in the 25th Century and battles evil.

Nu Image/Millennium's Avi Lerner got the rights from the Dille Trust, which is run by the surviving family of series originator John Flint Dille. Those rights had once been with Disney, but the Dille family was attracted to moving them to a small movie and gaining more control over the direction of the film. Despite web reports that Frank Miller had boarded the project, sources at Millennium disputed than any creatives had yet aligned to the project.

Buck Rogers has enjoyed incarnations in books, comic strips, movies, radio and television, a run that began in the 1920s. That included a feature serial from Universal in 1939 that starred Buster Crabbe, and a short-lived NBC series that starred Gil Gerard. Nu Image/Millennium will shop the property to find a studio partner, just the way it did after gaining the movie rights from Paradox Entertainment to "Conan," which is now being developed with Lionsgate.