A Few Notes on Movies of the Near Future

BenderFan writes "The first review of the next Futurama DVD, The Beast With a Billion Backs (out in the US on June 24), has appeared online. And the reviewer liked it — a lot." (I hope it's as good as Bender's Big Score.) Read on for reader submissions on two other upcoming movies. The Day The Earth Stood Still (with Keanu Reeves, but also John Cleese) is due out in December, and a movie version of Philip K. Dick's The Owl in Daylight is currently being drafted by Tony Grisoni; the interview linked below is appropriately surreal.

Etienne writes "Tony Grisoni is a British screenwriter who has co-written several Terry Gilliam's films (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tideland, Brothers Grimm and Lost in La Mancha).
He is currently writing the screenplay for 'The Owl in Daylight', based upon the book Dick was planning to write just before he died. The movie is produced by Electric Shepherd Productions, which is run by Anne and Laura Dick, PKD's daughters. Paul Giamatti is co-producing and will take the part of Philip K. Dick."

bowman9991 writes "Keanu Reeves' big budget remake of the 1951 science fiction classic 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' has all the right ingredients to be his biggest hit since 'The Matrix.' SFFMedia asks whether we are looking at another classic or a disastrous Hollywood star studded rehash? Now that the cold war anxieties from the original movie have been replaced with the threat of environmental catastrophe, will Keanu become some type of extraterrestrial Al Gore and ruin the movie?" (John Cleese plays Klaatu's giant 8-foot robotic pal called "Gort.")

Spoilers?

[antifoidulus]

It would be helpful if there were warnings about spoilers for each review....

You forgot about Stargate: Continuum the next sg1.

[Joe The Dragon]

You forgot about Stargate: Continuum the next sg1 movie.

We should make a list...

[mykepredko]

Here's my start at one (sorry no list because it ended up having too few characters per line):
Neuromancer (kudos to parent)/Crytonomicon (kudos to parent)/Ringworld/Rendezvous with Rama (I know but we've been waiting forever for it)/The moat in god's eye/Stranger in a strange land/Childhood's end/The man in high tower/Little Fuzzy/The moon is a harsh mistress/Starship troopers (one that doesn't suck)/The foundation trilogy/The caves of steel or The naked sun (erase "iRobot" from everybody's memory)/Red Mars going to Green Mars going to Blue Mars/The forever war/Ender's Game (I know that's been going on for years as well)/The long ARM of Gil Hamilton/Oath of fealty (I always liked that book)/Have spacesuit will travel/Tau Zero/Gateway/There will be time/Ensign Flandry/Dorsai/Berzerkers/Slan/The weapon shops of Isher/The duelling machine/The demolished man/The fountains of paradise/The city and the stars/Sun diver going to Startide rising/Way station

Please feel free to add to the list,

If there are any big hollywood producers out there, remember where this idea came from and I would think that you should be looking for an executive producer that understands this stuff so what you create doesn't suck (my rates are surprisingly reasonable).

myke

Re:Hey Hollywood

[morari]

And while you're at it, could you remotely stick to the source material, unlike that abomination you called I Am Legend? I think the only thing that the movie had in common with the book was the fact he was alone in the city.

Try "The Last Man on Earth". Not only does Vincent Price still have more acting ability than Will Smith can ever dream of, but Richard Matheson was actually involved in writing the screenplay. To be fair, I do believe that Matheson eventually left the project for one reason or another, but it was still a pretty good adaptation.

X-Files 2

[Anonymous Coward]

Due in theaters July 25th.

John Cleese doesn't play Gort...

[rekoil]

Bad submitter - from the article..."IGN reports that Cleese will play a physicist Dr. Barnhardt, a Nobel Prize laureate who helps work out why Klaatu and Gort have come to earth."

Sigh of relief. I can't imagine Gort being played with any personality, especially humor - he's a world-destroying robot, after all.

(So is Bender, but he doesn't count)

Re:Disaster

[crimperman]

> The new Gort - John Cleese!

and..

> But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong since it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies, but somehow I'm skeptical.

Well you're proven wrong on one part anyway. I can find no mention of Cleese playing Gort anywhere except in the TFS above. From the SFFMedia article it links to...

"IGN reports that Cleese will play a physicist Dr. Barnhardt, a Nobel Prize laureate who helps work out why Klaatu and Gort have come to earth."

I know this is /. but when the submitter hasn't read TFA we're off to a bad start!

Re:Can we subtract from the list?

[maxume]

Unless Wikipedia is completely off base, the movie wasn't even based off the book initially:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers_(film)#Comparison_with_the_original_novel [wikipedia.org]

Basically, the made a space-war-bug movie and appropriated the name.