Creator of 2010's Best Sci-Fi Action to Remake Starship Troopers – And There's No Better Candidate
The new adaptation of the novel will be very different from Paul Verhoeven's 1997 version.
There's no better duo than Paul Verhoeven and classic science fiction. First he took Philip K. Dick's story with the complex title We Can Remember It For You Wholesale and created the wonderful Total Recall.
Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers Wasn't a Faithful Adaptation
And seven years later, he turned a novel of another science fiction master, Robert A. Heinlein, into the action movie Starship Troopers.
Ideologically, Heinlein's original and Verhoeven's adaptation are completely opposite. On the surface, it's still a story about brave soldiers slicing up giant bugs. But if Heinlein's book is steeped in militarism, the director has turned the patriotic pathos into a sharp and wicked satire.
Neill Blomkamp Is Set to Adapt Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers
Great news for sci-fi action fans – Starship Troopers is returning to the big screen. The new Starship Troopers movie will be directed by Neill Blomkamp, who will also write and produce the project with his wife and creative partner Terri Tatchell.
Blomkamp is known for another sci-fi action film, District 9, which was his debut feature and was nominated for four Academy Awards.
Neill Blomkamp's Starship Troopers will not be a remake of Paul Verhoeven's film. The director will focus on adapting the original novel. That is, he will try to keep the main plot lines of the source material and ignore the significant changes Verhoeven made.
Neill Blomkamp Is the Perfect Director for Starship Troopers Adaptation
While news of new remakes often causes criticism and doubt among viewers, the fact that the new Starship Troopers will be directed by Neill Blomkamp has caused nothing but excitement among fans. Redditor RectifiedUser wrote:
“A Neill Blomkamp Starship Troopers movie will look absolutely phenomenal. I have no doubt in that, just wonder if they stick more to the book this time.”
And the audience's delight is understandable: Blomkamp's District 9 became one of the most unique examples of social science fiction at the time of its release, a success that has yet to be repeated.
Blomkamp masterfully blends spectacular action with a sharp social subtext, and not just in District 9. His next two films – the cyberpunk dystopias Elysium and Chappie – form a kind of trilogy with District 9.
They share the same aesthetic of a dirty and hopeless future with high tech and low life, and are dedicated to the problems of the "third world."
One can only hope that Blomkamp will stick with the project until the end. The director was tapped to helm a number of ambitious projects, including Halo, Robocop Returns and Alien 5, but none of them ever made it past the pre-production stage.
