With the major uptick in sci-fi studio tentpoles, Steven Spielberg is getting back to the genre with his next project, an adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson‘s novel Robopocalypse. While that project is gearing up for a production next year, we’ve got a brief update on it, but before that, news has come in regarding another film deal for Wilson.
The Hollywood Reporter lets us know that another one of his novels, Amped, is being prepped for feature film treatment. Originally over at Summit Entertainment, Working Title Films now reportedly have the rights to the project and experienced sci-fi director Alex Proyas (Dark City) is looking to direct the project. The sci-fi thriller takes place in the future where there is a deep divide between nanotech-enhanced humans and regular people and war breaks out between them.
While we wait on further updates on that project, Robopocalypse is indeed happening with Chris Hemsworth set to lead the film that chronicles robot-human conflict and is written by Drew Goddard. Anne Hathaway is still circling a female lead role and we got word this fall that Cloud Atlas and Skyfall star Ben Whishaw is lining up for a hacker role. The actor recently confirmed he’s in talks for the film in an interview with IamRogue, where he said production will kick off in London, as well as a few more details.
He opened about the adaptation, saying “it will be quite different from the book” and that it was a long process “to get it right.” Considering the source material takes more a vignette-esque structure, it looks like they are consolidating the story for this one, following just a specific group of people. We’ll update when more inforomation arrives, but one can see Robopocalypse when it hits theaters on April 25th, 2014.
Are you looking forward to Whishaw starring in this film? Have you read Amped?