A couple years ago, Hollywood optioned two of Daniel H. Wilson’s robot apocalypse novels, Robopocalypse (not even published yet at the time) and How To Survive A Robot Uprising. Steven Spielberg is directing Robopocalypse, while How To Survive A Robot Uprising was set to star Jack Black with Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine) directing.
To further demonstrate how different the tone of these two adaptations will be, Steven Spielberg has met with Chris Hemsworth (Thor, The Avengers) to discuss starring in Robopocalypse, opening April 25th, 2014. Deadline reports that no official offer has been made yet, but Spielberg wants him (Yeah, well, don’t we all?). As for the more serious, less Jack-Black-ey tone of Spielberg’s adaptation, The Playlist offers a brief synopsis:
Based on the book by Daniel H. Wilson and adapted by Drew Goddard, the sci-fi thriller is set in the near future where robots are a part of everyday human life…until a sentient artificial intelligence underneath the ice in Alaska programs them to kill. Written “World War Z” style, the book is via oral history and fleshed out with surveillance footage, secondhand accounts and more, in a book that apparently falls somewhere between “The Terminator” and Isaac Asimov (but more the former than the latter).
Drew Goddard was the screenwriter behind another Chris Hemsworth vehicle, Cabin In The Woods (which was awesome). In a Time Out London interview, Spielberg compared Robopocalypse to his Minority Report in that he’s enjoying creating a vision of the future in both films. He said a major theme in the film is exploring what happens when technologies created for our convenience become smarter than us. He admitted, “It’s not the newest theme, it’s been done throughout science fiction, but it’s a theme that becomes more relevant every year.”
Boy howdy, is that true. Next thing you know, they’ll be letting robotic pandas write blogs . . .
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