Ridley Scott originally planned a feature version of Joe Haldeman‘s The Forever War to be his third sci-fi movie. However, that never happened, but when Fox 2000 acquired the Haldeman book back in 2008 it is supposed to be the thing that brought him back to the genre.
Now comes word that the studio has handed the reigns over to Dante Harper, whose feature screenwriting debut Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters lands early next year. He most recently wrote All You Need Is Kill, which has been filming in the UK.
A few years ago, Blade Runner scribe David Webb Peoples was reportedly attached to be adapting the same novel for Scott, but Deadline’s piece doesn’t mention it.
Scott has earlier confirmed that the film would be in 3D, citing James Cameron’s Avatar as an inspiration for doing so:
I’m filming a book by Joe Haldeman called Forever War. I’ve got a good writer doing it. I’ve seen some of James Cameron’s work, and I’ve got to go 3D. It’s going to be phenomenal.
As of yet, there’s no firm plans how soon the film might start production.
Here’s the synopsis of the novel.
The book tells the timeless story of war, in this case a conflict between humanity and the alien Taurans. Humans first bumped heads with the Taurans when we began using collapsars to travel the stars. Although the collapsars provide nearly instantaneous travel across vast distances, the relativistic speeds associated with the process means that time passes slower for those aboard ship. For William Mandella, a physics student drafted as a soldier, that means more than 27 years will have passed between his first encounter with the Taurans and his homecoming, though he himself will have aged only a year. When Mandella finds that he can’t adjust to Earth after being gone so long from home, he reenlists, only to find himself shuttled endlessly from battle to battle as the centuries pass.
