Over at his official site, V creator Kenneth Johnson has a new post in his “V: The Second Generation” section dated October 13, 2008, that responds to a recent Variety article about ABC bringing the lizards of V back to primetime for a new TV show based on the original mini-series that aired in the ’80s. The show will have no involvement from Johnson, or the writer/director’s “Second Generation” idea. The statement below, while being on Johnson’s official site, is worded in such a way that it’s clear he didn’t write it. But since it is from his official site, I’m going to assume that this is an official response by Kenneth Johnson to the Variety story. If I’m wrong, I’ll correct myself later.

Those pesky green scaled aliens with the funky glasses will finally get another shot at a major audience 20 years after their first appearance, except it won’t be in the “Second Generation” project that the story’s original writer, Kenneth Johnson, had envisioned. Instead, ABC will be remaking the TV series (spawned from the two original mini-series, “V: The Original Mini-Series” and “V: The Final Battle”) that lasted only a year before being canceled. The new V will be written and produced by The 4400 veteran Scott Peters, who has no plans to stick to what Johnson did in the original, but will instead be diverting the reasons for the aliens’ arrival, as well as introducing new characters in his version.

The title of this post says it all. Is Kenneth Johnson’s “V: The Second Generation”, his sequel to his 1980s mini-series hit “V: The Original Mini-Series” and “V: The Final Battle” (okay, not so much the second one, which Mr. Johnson didn’t really have a lot to do with, which explains why it was not exactly all that great), gearing up for movie production? Yes, says the man himself. Or at least, he hopes to have the franchise move to the big screen, where it will launch a franchise with the big great helping of today’s CGI technology. More news about this below.

I have a soft spot for Kenneth Johnson’s original “V” mini-series, aka “V: The Original Miniseries”. In fact, I have a soft spot for Ken himself. Once, a while back, after viewing the “V” DVD, I emailed Ken and, to my astonishment, actually got a response. Now, Ken returns with “V: The Second Generation”, a novel that picks up 20 years after the events of the first “V” mini-series, but not “V: The Final Battle” mini-series, which Ken was not involved in. And oh yeah, forget the crappy TV show; it has nothing to do with “Second Generation”, either.