Oct 20, 2008 12:59 PM
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With the Transformers franchise roaring ahead, the time could finally be right for a Robotech movie. The only question is, will Tobey Maguire and Akiva Goldsman stick to the original storyline, about a crashed alien spaceship unifying the whole planet into a military quasi-dictatorship? We could soon find out, since producer Chuck Roven wants shooting to begin next year.
Roven talked to IESB about Robotech, and mentioned that there's no script yet. Maguire is producing, but may or may not star. (Most likely, he'll be too busy with the next two Spider-Man films.) Goldsman (I Am Legend, I, Robot, Batman And Robin) is also producing, but it's not clear if he's writing the script.
In the Robotech saga, an alien spaceship crashlands on Earth in 1999, after ten years of devastating global warfare. The crashed ship awakens the Earthlings to the possibility of alien invasion, and everybody rallies around, forming a new world government that marshals all resources to beat a possible alien invasion. Ten years later, the Earth ship is finally ready to launch — just as the first wave of Zentraedi attackers show up. It's up to two young pilots to save the day. Eventually, there are three waves of alien invasion.
Talking about the storyline, Roven said that an alien invasion is the "triggering event" for the movie's plot. So either he's confused about the crashed spaceship thing, or the movie will be different. But he also stressed that there's no script yet, and everything is up in the air. He wouldn't even say for sure whether the movie takes place on Earth. Production design hasn't even started yet, but Roven says it'll be reasonably faithful to the look of the original animated series.
I really hope Goldsman doesn't write the script for this film — his scripts are always a little too glib and preachy for me. I sort of hope they do keep the whole thing about the Earth uniting after the alien spaceship shows up, since it's like a look at the world after the end of Watchmen. But I hope they show the problematic parts of that scenario as well as the rosy ones. Also, I hope they keep the thing where the human culture starts to influence the warlike Zentraedi and "contaminate" the Zentraedi culture, since that could be fun to watch.
[IESB]
Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.
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