TV & Film News

Nicolas Refn to helm Barbarella television series

By Derek Hill June 21, 2012

Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn wants to turn us on with a remake of Barbarella. The character first appeared in Jean-Claude Forest's series of cult science fiction/erotic comic strips that were originally published in France in the 1960s.

Jane Fonda starred as the sexy space nymph in the 1968 film Barbarella, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. It's a campy, hallucinatory, visually opulent, and tacky film that was also unapologetically sexist at a time when the women's movement was going strong. After she left Vadim and embraced political radicalism, Fonda tried to keep as far away from the character as possible. But Barbarella has lived on through the decades.

The original film was produced by the legendary Dino De Laurentiis and before his death in 2010, he'd been attempting to get it remade. His wife, Martha De Laurentiis, took control of the project and has now brought Refn aboard. The project will not be a feature film this time, but a television series. It will be produced by Gaumont International Television, although no word yet as to who will broadcast it in the U.S. Refn will serve as both director and executive producer on the reboot.

TAGS: camp, comic strip, fantasy, remake, science fiction, television,

Barbarella (1968) Trailer