Ridley Scott for Forever War

Ridley Scott's dance-card is so marked that you can't even see the print anymore. The now-prolific director - whose Body Of Lies opens shortly - is to direct a film version of Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel of interspace conflict, The Forever War, (as well as taking on a new version of Aldous Huxley's more cerebral Brave New World,) according to Variety.

Indeed it is crazy that the director who has contributed so much to the shape of cinematic science fiction in the last thirty years has kept his SFX outings limited to historical drama such as Gladiator.

I'm not sure The Forever War is a great choice, but then I wouldn't have predicted quite what he would make of the very ideas-driven Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? [Blade Runner].

I read The Forever War at age twelve, and even then wasn't impressed with it as much more than a Heinlein-esque military procedural. Possibly its action-driven storyline will be a better movie than it was a read.

If what Scott says is true, it may have more impact now than it did then:

"I first pursued ‘Forever War’ 25 years ago, and the book has only grown more timely and relevant since. It’s a science-fiction epic, a bit of ‘The Odyssey’ by way of ‘Blade Runner,’ built upon a brilliant, disorienting premise."

Variety reports that special effects legend Richard Edlund, who worked on the original Star Wars trilogy and many classic SF pictures thereafter, had previously bought rights to  Forever War with $400,000 of his own money, intending to follow the SFX wizard's now familiar path (Fincher, Johnston, Strausse, et al) to directing.

Variety