Future vision ... Ridley Scott's Bladerunner
Post-script:
Since I posted this, FirstShowing.net has done a bit of detective work and discovered that the LA Times broke the news more than two months ago that the sci-fi classic Scott is working on is indeed Brave New World.
Why this wasn't picked up by anyone back then and why Scott felt the need to keep the subject of his film under wraps, when it was already in the public domain, is a little mystifying.
But hey, that's still pretty exciting "news". Although there will be no doubt be a fair bit of internet gnashing of teeth over the actor apparently taking the main role - Leonardo diCaprio.
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The last few years have been a relatively fallow period for fans of celluloid science fiction. We've had the occasional minor masterpiece distilled from the writings of Philip K Dick (Minority Report), and the odd culty "this is the film that Phantom Menace should have been" moment (Serenity). But we've also seen a number of Isaac Asimov adaptations that would surely have had the inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics spinning in his grave (Bicentennial Man, I, Robot).
High time, then, for the genre's greatest living film-maker to return to the fray. Ridley Scott, who made his name with those twin early 80s emissaries of a dystopian future, Alien and Blade Runner, has told Eclipse magazine that he is planning to make his first science fiction film for 26 years.
"I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month," said Scott. "That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film (with Russell Crowe) that I am doing now in England."
Scott's choices over the past decade have seen him derided in some quarters as something of a hack, but few will deny that his early sci-fi output was genuinely groundbreaking. We can only hope the book in question meets the same quality standard: something by Iain M Banks or Orson Scott Card would do nicely, thanks very much.
