The Forever War, the Hugo Award-winning 1974 novel by Joe Haldeman, will finally be brought to the screen with Channing Tatum lined up to star.
Warner Bros. ultimately won a bidding war against Sony Pictures for the rights, which had been with Ridley Scott for the last few years before lapsing. Tatum and WB’s last sci-fi effort, Jupiter Ascending (pictured above), was a box-office and critical disappointment, so the studio will be hoping that The Forever War – which has spawned two follow-ups – will have better franchise potential.
From Amazon, the plot is as follows:
The Earth’s leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand–despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But “home” may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries…
Jon Spaihts has been tipped to pen the script for the adaptation. The scribe has his (brilliant) original screenplay Passengers set-up at Sony and is attached to the recently announced Cube remake, alongside the small matter of Marvel’s Doctor Strange.
Do you like the sound of The Forever War? Do you think Tatum will have better luck this time than he did with Jupiter Ascending?
Source: Deadline
