Galaxy Quest 2 was in the works before Alan Rickman died

Sam Rockwell revealed that Amazon was close to greenlighting a follow-up to the cult film

If you haven't seen Galaxy Quest, you should stop what you're doing to do so immediately; it's a truly hilarious 1999 satire following the faded stars of a 1970s sci-fi series who are beamed aboard the spaceship their show was set on.

Now, one of the film's stars Sam Rockwell - who played Guy Fleegman, a jobbing actor who appeared as an extra in the series within the film - has suggested that the untimely death of Alan Rickman put the brakes on sequel plans at Amazon Studios.

“They were going to do a sequel on Amazon,” he revealed in a Nerdist podcast. “We were ready to sign up, and [then] Alan Rickman passed away and Tim Allen wasn’t available – he has a show [Last Man Standing] – and everybody’s schedule was all weird. It was going to shoot, like, right now."

"And how do you fill that void of Alan Rickman? That’s a hard void to fill.”

He's not wrong: in a cast comprised of Allen, Rockwell, Sigourney Weaver and Tony Shalhoub, it's Alan Rickman's Alexander Dane that many consider Galaxy Quest's crowning glory.

The only word Rickman publicly spoke about a potential sequel was in 2013 when he commented: “They’d need a few zimmer frames.”

Rickman's death from pancreatic cancer on 14 January led to an outpouring of tributes from across the world. Having made his film debut at the age of 41 as iconic villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard, the actor went on to star in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Sweeney Todd and as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. He will make a posthumous appearance in Eye of the Sky - out 15 April - and his voice will be heard in Disney sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, out May.