Forbidden Planet Remade
November 25th, 2009
Is it time for a remake of Forbidden Planet?
J. Michael Straczynski has signed on to write a remake of the 1956 classic sci-fi film The Forbidden Planet. Echoing the story of The Tempest, it envisions an abandoned planet, its inhabitants far advanced beyond humanity and apparently extinguished in a single night two hundred thousand years previously. Their technology churns on without them but when a human expedition lands, it too is wiped out mysteriously, leaving only an old scientist and his daughter as survivors. The story picks up twenty years later as a second expedition arrives, and anything but hilarity ensues.
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There is little early word on the project other than that Straczynski is focusing more of the plot on telling the story of the first expedition, and that Warner is hoping it turns into a franchise (because every studio wants to turn every movie into a franchise) so they're throwing a decent amount of money at the project. [...]
On the plus side, although he's worked quite a bit in comics in recent years JMS has some form when it comes to putting a good science fiction story on screen. What's more, it's been more than half a century since the original; perhaps it's time for a new generation's take on the classic story.
But then, by all accounts The Day the Earth Stood Still didn't work out well for anyone. Nor did Lost in Space. And JMS is only the writer, not the director. Not to mention the notion that the studio sees the remake as the start of a franchise.
This isn't a very good idea at all, is it? Perhaps we'd best hope that this is all a terrible misunderstanding, and that what the studios are actually planning is a big screen adaptation of Return to the Forbidden Planet.
