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Cape Town – The new version of Netflix's Lost in Space, based on the 1960's American television science fiction series about a family's adventures in space as they try to find their way back to Earth, will start globally on 13 April – and with amazing movie budget special effects, looks nothing like the original show of 5 decades ago.
The first season will have 10 hour-long episodes and is set in the year 2046 when the Robinson family and their spaceship Jupiter 2 encounter a space-time anomaly and crashlands on an unknown planet.
Stranded without knowing where they are, they try to fix their spaceship as they encounter various kinds of mystery, a robot, and also have to deal with a saboteur in their midst.
Toby Stephens who was Captain Flint in Black Sails is the dad and leader, John Robinson, with Molly Parker as the mom, Maureen – a brilliant aerospace engineer.
Ignacio Serricchio is a blue-collar worker and a smuggler, Taylor Russell is Judy Robinson, the eldest daughter, Mina Sundwall is Penny Robinson the middle child, and Maxwell Jenkins is Will Robinson, the youngest Robinson child. As in the original, he's the most prone to seek out adventure and land in trouble, but to also save the family from dangerous encounters.
The nefarious Dr Smith who constantly tried to undermine and sabotage the Robinsons has undergone a gender change and is now portrayed by Parker Posey. Of course there's also the robot – now looking hugely different, and that in the original often shouted and warned "Danger, Will Robinson!"
Watch the trailer here:
Zack Estrin is the executive producer of Lost in Space, produced by Legendary Television, and he told Empire magazine that Lost in Space will be "optimistic" and be "more Star Wars than Star Trek. It's about discovery and adventure and wonder".
Toby Stephens told Collider that the new version "is fundamentally a story that it's a family that is lost in a difficult, life-threatening situation and how it challenges them and brings them closer together".
"That is essentially what the story of this is, it's just the context is a lot more modern. It's a more modern take on the '60s version. If you look at it now, it's charming, but it seems so innocent. Whereas this is a version that is for our time. I'm hoping it will still have humour and humanity in it, but it has obviously gotta be for a modern audience."
Besides the trailer for Lost in Space, Netflix also released a Lost in Space featurette to help flesh out the characters some more with the actors talking about family values and their characters.
Watch it here:
