Despite being revealed as a paid studio shill this morning from a clearly superior film critic, I’ve decided to bring you Rejects some sweet new big-budget movie development news! This time, it comes straight from cog-in-the-machine screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski who sat down with AMC’s Blog to talk a bit about all the great stuff he’s got lined up (and that I’ve been paid millions of dollars to say I’m excited about). Cha-ching!
First up, the “Babylon 5” creator spills about his work on Silver Surfer: Requiem. There’s still some question as to whether it will get made or not because of a poor showing for the abysmal second Fantastic Four movie. Of course, it would be incredible to see Galactus up on the big screen, and Straczynski has the writing chops and comic knowledge to create a great story. With any luck, everyone involved with the Fantastic Four movies will be banned from the set.
He’s also working on the adaptation of Max Brooks’s “World War Z” which reinvigorates the political angle of classic zombie films while creating unsubtle rebukes to the Bush administration. From Straczynski’s comments, it would appear that he understands the heart of the satire.
“Well, it’s really sort of an investigation — as the book is accomplished after the fact, the main character is a person working with the UN after the zombie wars, going around to see what went wrong, what was not known and who didn’t connect the dots. In a way it’s looking at the Katrina situation, it’s not that far away from the Iraq Study Group Report, and everyone wants to cooperate to find out what went wrong,” the writer said.
As if that weren’t enough, he also did some doctoring for the Wachowski’s Ninja Assassin script and starts work soon on an adaptation of (and how cool is this?) the Lensman series. I’m fairly sure every major sci-fi geek has been waiting for a movie version of those beloved Super-Science books since they came out in the ’30s. Even more exciting, the project should span three movies, and the first should be on the horizon as soon as 2010.
Since it’s Imagine Entertainment that owns the rights to the series, there have been some rumors rolling around about Ron Howard himself directing them. While that remains to be confirmed, Straczynski is definitely writing the films.
Check out the full interview at AMC, and check back for more studio cheerleading from me and the rest of the Film School Rejects. It’s about to get a lot geekier.
Related Topics: Science Fiction
