Warner Bros. has optioned a new movie called The Ditch — but its premise sounds a bit more promising than its title. Written by music-video/documentary producer Sascha Penn (Chapelle's Block Party), The Ditch is about a prison on one of Jupiter's moons, housing the worst of Earth's criminals. A prison guard's family is held hostage and he's coerced into helping a convicted terrorist escape on the terrorist's scheduled execution day. With a good action movie director (and maybe some volcanoes, if they set it on Io) it could be a cracking good actioner. [Variety]
It's Like Prison Break... But In Space!
12:11 PM on Mon May 5 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
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25 comments









Comments
As long as there's some good prison sex under the sultry moon light of Io, then I'm cool with it. How in the world did anyone get to the point where they could afford to send prisoners to the Jovian system? Could we start by just sending them to Detroit?
Marooned on Ceti Alpha Five. He's completely mad, Admiral. He blames you for the death of his wife.
I hear Vin Diesel might be available for this.
Don't gimme me pictures of tatooed actors if they are not related to a possible The Stars My Destination movie.
@Jeff-Minor: If they used to send prisoners half-way across the world, I don't see transporting them half-way across the solar system as too big a leap.
What I don't get is the death sentence thing: He's already been removed from society, and being isolated in the middle of bloody no-where should be one of those "worse than death" fates.
Also, I wonder if there'd be a way to work Kurt Russell into it. Just because more movies need Kurt Russell.
Wasn't this the plot of "The One"?
I'm pretty sure I've already seen this movie 3 times.
@Plague & extracrispy: I'm actually quite positive i have seen this movie three times and that it stared vin diesel each time.
@extracrispy: I think I've seen this movie on the SciFi channel at least three times.
For some reason I just had a terrible flash back of that NBC Buck Rogers series episode, where Buck helps some dude escape from prison, and then is stalked by the pcychotic cyborg prison guard. It hurt my eyes then, now it just pisses me off. Prison Break in space... we need that just like we need Flavor of Luv live from Mogadishu.
I HATE our firewall here... messes with my Giz Chi!
Put Sean Connery in it and call it "Outland", no wait a second, that was a Jovian-Moon prison with drug-smugglers...and SHOTGUNS! In pressurized domes! explosive decompression-AAAAAAAAAAGG---Ker-splat!
You KNOW they're gonna have the explosive-decompression scene...
P.S.
Tattoo-boy's gonna look really funny when he's old and fat. All my tattooed old fat friends look horrible. I avert my eyes...
@MarlboroTestMonkey7:
How about an old movie based on Bradbury?
+ Watch video
It sucked when it was called Fortress [www.imdb.com] and Fortress 2 [www.imdb.com] and it'll suck when its call "The Ditch"
@extracrispy: I just don't see prison labor being worth enough to pay to transport their mass. If this new movie has a post-scarcity economy, then fine, but I bet it won't.
@Jeff-Minor: Nano-fiber tether space elevator. Problem solved. ;)
@russdanger:
here's a video of the makeup team on "Prison Break" applying the tattoos to Miss Wentworth Miller.
+ Watch video
Why bother even making this movie? Surely you can just mine every other movie about breaking out of prison for footage and splice it all together with some digitally-added outer-space backgrounds.
Jesus we've seen this so many times before.
e.g.
FORTRESS.
Why oh why does everyone keep re-inventing the past?
have we really run out of ideas?
Are we going to watch the same films over and over again?
@flexiverse: They don't have the guts to do the Sector General books? That way, they could toss in a little ST, a little ER, alien-of-the-week who isn't just another bumpy forehead...
I wanna see cinrusskin. And Kelgians. And Pathologist Murcheson.
@Amishjohn.
Did a little research on that, Sector General does indeed look like a prime candidate for TV/Film.
Interesting concept. Certainly nothing on this scale has been done before.
Thanks for introducing me to this series of books.
There are so many great books and ideas out there it really pains me to think idiots keep re-hashing past films.
Haha, actually when I had only heard the name of Prison Break and seen only couple of some dark promo photos my first thoughts about the series were that it was situated in some spaceship prison or something like that.
.@Git Em SteveDave:
That would be part of the solution, but you still need very affordable ships with advanced engines. If the economy has been transformed by nanotechnology, the sky is the limit. But I also think that if our nanotechnology is that good it might also be applied to the human brain, allowing us to "fix" criminals. I can't see sending them off to a Jovian moon as less horrible than correcting their behavior.
@Plague: If that's true, then I am definitely available to see it. However the Altar has not sung in a while so I think he's booked up.
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