There was a time when many believed Steven Spielberg would direct "Robopocalypse," which tells the story of humanity's desperate last stand against an AI uprising.
It was going to be an incredibly ambitious undertaking, with a $300M budget and a cast set to include Chris Hemsworth, Anne Hathaway, and Ben Whishaw. Of course, none of it materialized. Spielberg later mentioned the project was too "gargantuan" and "would have ended a whole studio." He wasn't ready to take that on.
All this to say, there's an update, and we've now gone from Spielberg to... Ron Howard? That's right: according to THR, Opie himself will direct "Robopocalypse," which is now a limited series for streaming.
The story is based on Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel, and none other than Akiva Goldsman will be writing the script(s).
Where do I start with Goldsman? Oh, hey! That's the guy who wrote "Batman & Robin"! Then again, four years later, he went on to win the Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Howard's "A Beautiful Mind." His screenplay for "Cinderella Man" wasn't bad either. Otherwise, Goldsman has had some real stinkers over the years: "Batman Forever," "Practical Magic," "Lost in Space," "I, Robot," "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons," "Winter's Tale," "The Dark Tower," "Insurgent," and "The 5th Wave."
In 2011, when Spielberg signed on to direct the adaptation, Drew Goddard ("The Cabin in the Woods") wrote the screenplay, a far more exciting prospect than Goldsman. DreamWorks Pictures and 20th Century Fox were set to co-finance and distribute. The film moved into pre-production in early 2013, including location scouting in Montreal, and even had a targeted release date of April 25, 2014. A few years after Spielberg exited, Michael Bay took over, and thank the movie gods that never happened.
The streaming format might actually work for this property. Wilson's novel is structured as a series of linked first-person accounts spread across the globe, which is a risky proposition for a movie, even if the length would have been 3 hours. Spread across six or eight episodes, it will have more room to breathe.
We're now left with Howard, who sits somewhere in the middle — not as bad as Bay, but not as visually gifted as Spielberg. Who knows how much his streaming adaptation will cost, but it certainly won't come cheap. It's currently being shopped around to streamers. Will anyone bite?
There was a time when many believed Steven Spielberg would direct "Robopocalypse," which tells the story of humanity's desperate last stand against an AI uprising.