Spielberg On Robopocalypse

Prepare for global war between man and machine

If current plans remain in place, then the next sci-fi film we’ll see from Steven Spielberg will be Robopocalypse, based on the novel by Daniel H Wilson, which should go into production after the director’s finished his next movie project, Lincoln (not the vampire-hunting one, the serious one).

Spielberg discusses the project briefly with London listing magazine Time Out:

“It’s a movie about a global war between man and machine… It’s a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would.”

Despite the rather lurid title, he likens the film’s tone to Minority Report:

“Robopocalypse takes place in 15 or 20 years, so it’ll be another future we can relate to. It’s about the consequences of creating technologies which make our lives easier, and what happens when that technology becomes smarter than we are. It’s not the newest theme, it’s been done throughout science fiction, but it’s a theme that becomes more relevant every year.”

The screenplay has been adapted by Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and is expected to go into production this year. In the novel Robopocalypse, an increasingly robot-reliant society faces extinction after a computer scientist accidentally unleashes a sentient artificial intelligence named Archos that infects all devices that are microchip controlled.