'Starship Troopers' Reboot in the Works

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**reds8n**

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/starship-troopers-reboot-works-943882

Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, the writing duo behind the upcoming Zac Efron-Dwayne Johnson 'Baywatch' movie, will pen the script for the alien-bug war film.
The bugs are coming back.

Columbia Pictures is rebooting Starship Troopers, the 1997 sci-fi film directed by Paul Verhoeven.

The studio has tapped Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, the writing duo behind the upcoming Baywatch movie, to pen the script for a new theatrical feature film that would relaunch a potential franchise.

Neal H. Moritz, the producer behind the Fast & Furious franchise, is producing with Toby Jaffe, with whom he worked on the studio's remake of another 1990s sci-fi pic, Total Recall.

Starship Troopers is based on the sci-fi war novel by Robert A. Heinlein that told the military life of a soldier named Johnny Rico who moves up the ranks as mankind fights a war against alien bugs.

Verhoeven took some of the novel's themes and ran with them, making a movie that satirically took on fascism and militarism and echoed propaganda films like Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. It starred Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards and Neil Patrick Harris.

Starship Troopers was a mixed success at the time of its release but did achieve a cult following. During the DVD boom of the 2000s, it became a mini-franchise for the studio, which produced three direct-to-DVD movies.

The studio is not remaking the film but is said to be going back to the original Heinlein novel for an all-new take. No personnel from the 1997 film are involved.

Matthew Milam is overseeing for the studio.

Shannon and Swift, who also wrote 2009's remake of Friday the 13th, are repped by UTA and McKuin Frankel.

.... I'm sure if we dug about about we could possibly find maybe one of two books that maybe haven't been adapted already.

**adamsouza**

Would you like to know more ?

Yes. Yes, I would.

**Frazzled**

Well if they did the marines like in the book-you know nuke throwing super jumping armored behemoths-that might be cool.

**Nevelon**

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Starship Troopers is a SF classic as a book. The movie was an interesting adaptation. I think they touched on the politics adequately (which was important) but didn’t do the power armor justice. Probably due to budget/tech reasons. To use 40k references, the book was in Tau crisis suits, but the movie was about firewarriors.

It will be interesting to see how it gets redone.

**AduroT**

Not to mention the book bugs were not mere zerglings but were technogically advanced as well and tended to pack a pair of lascannons each.

**Easy E**

I bet they miss the sarcasm from Verhoeven's and end up glorifying Fascism in this one. No more Michael Ironsides teaching us about the Punic Wars. :(

The US market has changed a lot after all.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

certainly interested to see a more direct adaption, although the Verhoven stuff was good silly fun

if they can get the suits right in feel it will be great

**BrotherGecko**

I was really excited for this but then I found out that it wants to be like the book. Verhoeven's movie is one of my favorites and its sad that it will likely be a literal verison of Verhoeven's satire that happened to be vaguely similar to a silly Hienlein book about RAH-RAH war in super suits.

**Polonius**

reds8n wrote:

.... I'm sure if we dug about about we could possibly find maybe one of two books that maybe haven't been adapted already.

I'd argue that the movie didn't really adapt the book, at least not in anything approaching a straight forward manner.

Heinlein's book was mostly a character study, using Rico as a reason for extensive exposition about a future political system, with some pretty cool action sequences. While I don't think Heinlein meant the system to be seen as amazing, it was also pretty clearly not a dystopia. I interpreted it mostly as "look how neat this is!"

The movie, while awesome, is essentially a satire of the book. It ramps up the action scenes, and escalates many aspects of the book to a ridiculous level.

So, I think a "straight" adaption could be interesting.

**Mr Morden**

I love the first film and don't mind the sequels - love to see them carry on the story and include the power armoured stuff like the animated series

**Ratius**

Hmmm. I can see another robocop/total recall waste coming on :(

**Mr Morden**

Ratius wrote:
Hmmm. I can see another robocop/total recall waste coming on :(

Not seen the new Robocop film

Kate Beckinsale was in TR and I also enjoyed the rest of the film.

**Ratius**

Robocp wasnt a complete cock up but it was sub par at best. A lot of wasted potential.
I hated TR

**Asterios**

this is one of the cases where I liked the original movie better then the book, the book got too philosophical.

**StygianBeach**

Easy E wrote:
I bet they miss the sarcasm from Verhoeven's and end up glorifying Fascism in this one. No more Michael Ironsides teaching us about the Punic Wars. :(

The US market has changed a lot after all.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

I agree, I reckon they will miss the sarcasm and therefore I am not looking forward to what they come up with.

If the movie is as good as Enders game though, I will be happy.

**Ahtman**

The original film was a really interesting adaptation but leaves lots of room for someone to have a different vision. The problem is, as noted above, that it most likely will lack vision beyond simple adaptation. It has the potential to be interesting though so lets hope they do something good with it.

I don't have a lot of hope though.

**Yodhrin**

Easy E wrote:
I bet they miss the sarcasm from Verhoeven's and end up glorifying Fascism in this one. No more Michael Ironsides teaching us about the Punic Wars. :(

The US market has changed a lot after all.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

I really, really don't - Baywatch, Total Recall, and Robocop reboots, that's the team that are doing this. It's going to be a gakshow, because they're either going to "update the original movie for modern audiences", ie rip off the ideas and execute it poorly while strenuously ignoring the fact that the original movie is, if anything, even more relevant today than it was when it came out; or, they're going to do an uncritical adaptation of the novel and frankly I prefer to watch sci-fi that's at least a little uplifting, rather than 90+ minutes of glorifying fascism.

If this is what we have to look forward to from Hollywood, then I wish the entertainment industry PR bollocks was actually true and file sharing actually would bankrupt the industry, at least then some startups with fresh ideas might have a shot without the dinosaur studios to contend with.

**Nostromodamus**

I loved the original movie, even if it didn't follow the book too closely. I'll be following the development with interest.

**Trondheim**

This will end up like a total waste of time, money and effort like the last Troopers movie was. The books where good but this stinks of B movie gallore

**dazblackhawk**

Wasn't there an animated series done after the movies along the lines of 'Rico's Roughnecks'. As far as I recall it had the 'skinnys'(???) as an allied alien race.

**BrookM**

The CGI series was somewhat more in line with the novels, with skinnies and large marauder suits.

**chromedog**

dazblackhawk wrote:
Wasn't there an animated series done after the movies along the lines of 'Rico's Roughnecks'. As far as I recall it had the 'skinnys'(???) as an allied alien race.

Yup, SST: Roughnecks chronicles. Closer to the book, but kept a few movie changes (Dizzy being a girl - Dizzy's a guy in the book).
Raczak is still in charge of the roughnecks.

**adamsouza**

It would be great to see Chas from the animated series make it into the live action.

**KingCracker**

Ratius wrote:
Robocp wasnt a complete cock up but it was sub par at best. A lot of wasted potential.
I hated TR

This is my feelings on those as well. Robocop was watchable and at times pretty cool but I did have a LOT of the stink face going on as well (I still dont get why his hand survived and needed to be implemented into the Robocop suit)

The Total Recall remake visually made my eyes water and my tongue roll outta my mouth but the movie itself I just didnt like at all. Though I will admit I might have some bias as the original is one of my absolute fav scifi movies of all time.

Ill look forward to this remake simply because Starship troopers IS my fav scifi movie and getting more of it should be fun. Hell I liked the Tron continuation movie just because I love me some Tron. Fingers crossed

**Ouze**

I've probably read the book 2 dozen times and would love to see a faithful adaptation.

Instead, we're going to get a watered down, dumber, less gory version of the previous movie. Which I will likely enjoy anyway despite knowing it's crap.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Ouze wrote:
I've probably read the book 2 dozen times and would love to see a faithful adaptation.

Instead, we're going to get a watered down, dumber, less gory version of the previous movie. Which I will likely enjoy anyway despite knowing it's crap.

How did you get through it two dozen times? Did you skip the philosophy or the action bits?

**Chancetragedy**

If this is a visual mix of edge of tomorrow and verhoevens style but in a more direct adaptation of the book this could be good. Color me cautiously optimistic.

**King Pariah**

I was optimistic when I saw the title of the thread. After reading about those writing the script and those who will be producing this film... I'll be surprised if this is well received.

**tneva82**

BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Ouze wrote:
I've probably read the book 2 dozen times and would love to see a faithful adaptation.

Instead, we're going to get a watered down, dumber, less gory version of the previous movie. Which I will likely enjoy anyway despite knowing it's crap.

How did you get through it two dozen times? Did you skip the philosophy or the action bits?

Why need to skip? It's short book suitable for one night reading.

**CthuluIsSpy**

Yeah, its not a particularly long book. We're not talking about A Song of Ice and Fire here, its only like 300 pages.