Ridley Scott to Direct The Forever War
Looks like Ridley Scott is eyeing his next foray into science-fiction, and unfortunately it won’t be Brave New World, as was rumoured many months ago. Instead he has secured the rights to Joe Haldeman’s novel The Forever War, about an intergalactic battle between Earth and an alien species known as the Taurans. Soldiers enter the fray by using something similar to wormholes, which allow them to cover massive amounts of space in a few seconds.
The story sounds a bit like Battlestar Galactica or Starship Troopers, which is more than enough to pique my interest. One weird element of the book is that in order to stop the overpopulation of Earth, the government officially encourages homosexuality. I’ll be curious to see if they keep that in the movie. The book was written in 1974 and is considered to be based loosely on the author’s experiences in the Vietnam War. Apparently Scott wanted to do this movie way back in the 80s, but the rights could not be acquired cleanly at the time. Either way I’m glad he’s getting a chance to do it now… it sounds like it will definitely be something to look forward to!
Comments (11)
WIN.
Ridley Scott is back in science fiction again! Let us pray this sticks.
Posted by Ryan M. on October 13th, 2008I love Joe Haldeman’s earlier novels and Ridley Scott is one of the best directors there is. This is actually pretty exciting !
Posted by Paul Andrews on October 13th, 2008Not familar with the source material but this sounds cool atleast from a visual standpoint.
Posted by Ian on October 13th, 2008Oh my god I just got goosebumps. Awesome!
Posted by Paul on October 13th, 2008Sounds very interesting.
Posted by cronenfly on October 13th, 2008its starting to feel like Scott has a movie out every year for the sake of keeping busy… I mean I haven’t felt a true dedication behind the last several efforts.
Posted by Goon on October 13th, 2008true goon. with him returning to science fiction hopefully he will direct the shit out of this one. i mean that in the best way possible.
Posted by cronenfly on October 13th, 2008I was thinking my next Treknobabble would be about how the upcoming Star Trek movie would most likely not become a science-fiction classic, and then segue into elaborating on a previous statement I had made in a Cantankerous about how science-fiction films have lost integrity and intelligence behind them. One of my claims was to be that source material from science-fiction writers was being ignored. And I was thinking how a movie based on The Forever War would be just as relevant now as when the book was written.
And lo and behold, Sean posts this announcement.
Posted by Reed Farrington on October 14th, 2008“One weird element of the book is that in order to stop the overpopulation of Earth, the government officially encourages homosexuality. I’ll be curious to see if they keep that in the movie.”
Oh god this is, like, the entire point of the book.
If they lost this, it would hardly make sense..
Posted by mekon on October 19th, 2008C’mon, mekon, The Forever War is a cool title. Who cares what the book is about? Maybe Ridley Scott will rename it, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Posted by Reed Farrington on October 20th, 2008The book is great. First hollywood blockbuster sci-fi that will take time dilation seriously, methinks.
Posted by lee taulor on May 21st, 2009Leave a Reply