Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 science fiction adventure television series produced by Universal Studios

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

. The series ran for two seasons between 1979–1981, and the feature-length pilot episode for the series was released as a theatrical film several months before the series aired. The film and series were developed by Glen A. Larson

Glen A. Larson

Glen Albert Larson is an American television producer and writer best known as the creator of Battlestar Galactica, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and Knight Rider.-Career:...

, based upon the character Buck Rogers

Buck Rogers

Anthony Rogers is a fictional character that first appeared in Armageddon 2419 A.D. by Philip Francis Nowlan in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. A sequel, The Airlords of Han, was published in the March 1929 issue....

created in 1928 by Philip Francis Nowlan

Philip Francis Nowlan

Philip Francis Nowlan was an American science fiction author, best known as the creator of Buck Rogers.-Career:...

 that had previously been featured in comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

s, novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s, a serial film, and on television and radio.
Inspired by the massive success of Star Wars

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...

two years earlier, the pilot film opened in cinemas on March 30, 1979.