Will The New 'Starship Troopers' Reboot Stay Faithful To The Book? (hollywoodreporter.com)

HughPickens.com shares news from the Hollywood Reporter: "Columbia Pictures is rebooting Starship Troopers, the 1997 sci-fi film directed by Paul Verhoeven... The studio is not remaking the film but is said to be going back to the original Heinlein novel for an all-new take." The original movie, considered a mixed success at the time of its release, went on to achieve a cult following, and during the DVD boom of the 2000s it became a mini-franchise for the studio, which produced three additional direct-to-DVD movies... "Starship Troopers [the novel] has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist in its creation of a society where democracy has been severely restricted..." writes Graeme McMillan. "The question then becomes: in updating Starship Troopers to make it more acceptable to today's audience, can it still manage to remain faithful enough to Heinlein's original to please the existing fan base?"
The script will be written by the writers of the upcoming Baywatch film starring Zac Efron and Dwayne Johnson.

Comments

Re:Why would it

[alvinrod]

The 1997 film wasn't even based on the book, but was from an unrelated script called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9. About the only thing it has in common with the book is the title and that humanity is fighting some bug monsters. Apparently someone decided to buy the rights to the name so it could be marketed more easily and they incorporated a few concepts from the book.

However, it was still an enjoyable film even if it wasn't a faithful book adaptation. Even today, I'm skeptical that a faithful adaptation could work as a movie, so at best we get a vacuous CGI action movie.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Dogtanian]

Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist

unbelievable. The entire movie is biting satire of the perils of a society always at war and a society with a universally hated enemy.

Know how I can tell you didn't read the article? (#) Because it's quite clear that in its original context- rather than the misleadingly-edited summary- that it refers to the original book, not to the film:-

Despite being not only one of Heinlein's best-selling titles and winning the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960, Starship Troopers has been decried as promoting fascism and being racist [..]

Verhoeven's [1997 film of] Starship Troopers was anything but faithful to the novel, discarding massive elements of the book's mythology — sorry, those who wanted to see the power armor — and ramping up some of its more outré parts to create something that's as much political and social satire as it is a science fiction action movie.

At any rate Hugh Pickens' original unedited submission is also quite clear that the writer was referring to the original book. The responsibility therefore lies with "EditorDave" who we can assume was the one who cut it down. Admittedly it needed trimming, but it's also an editor's job to make sure that the meaning hasn't been misleadingly altered in the process. (##)

(#) Yeah, I know. I've been on Slashdot approaching fifteen years, and it was a cliche back then.

(##) Yeah, I know. The jokes about editors not doing their job have been a staple of Slashdot as far back as I can remember too. Doesn't excuse it, though.

Re:Awesome satire.

[Dogtanian]

The actual article makes clear that the quote refers to the novel, not the film. So does Hugh Pickens' original submission. The edited version of the summary doesn't.

Re:Awesome satire.

[MightyMartian]

You are aware, I trust, that the majority of Muslims aren't Arabs, right?

Or maybe not. The level of knowledge of some people here outside fairly limited technical areas is stunning. It's like a forum filled with Rain Man-like idiot savants who can memorize phone books, but have absolutely no knowledge of the world outside their house.