Tagged: Flash Gordon

The Sci-Fi Channel is going dipping into the golden age of comic strips and resurrecting Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon for a new television series.

Eric Johnson has been named as the latest actor to portray Flash in this radical reimagining of the series.  Johnson is best known to ComicMix fans as Smallville’s Whitney Fordman, quarterback and love interest for Lana Lang.

Dale Arden, Hans Zarkov and Ming the Merciless have yet to be cast with production of the 22 episodes set to begin in, where else, Vancouver on May 1.

The series will debut on the channel in August, date and time to be announced.  Rick Rosenthal, who worked with Johnson on Smallville, and has also handled Sci Fi’s The Dresden Files, will direct the first two episodes.  While the original strip featured the story of the planet Mongo threatening Earth and Flash journeying into space to save his planet, the television series will dramatically alter the premise.  Mongo will now be another dimension with Flash giving up his original polo in favor of other pursuits and being located in the pacific northwest.

The last time a live action Flash was on the small screen was in 1954 in an eight episode series starring Steve Holland, who later provided the visual look for James Bama’s Doc Savage paintings.

Flash Gordon has been previously portrayed by Larry “Buster” Crabbe in the three Universal movie serials from the 1930s and later, by Sam J. Jones, in the tongue-in-cheek Dino DeLaurentiss travesty from 1980.