FWS Topics: What Is Going On With THE FOREVER WAR Movie?!

In the next two years, more military science fiction films are incoming to the big screen. With works like All You Need Is Kill with Tom Cruise, Ender's Game, Pacific Rim, AVATAR 2, and portions of Tom Cruise's Oblivion and Will Smith's After Earth, are bombarding the local movie houses, so, it seems logically that Ridley Scott would push his long-awaited adoption of the MSF classic, The Forever War to the front of his production company's schedule. You would think that...but that doesn't seem to be the case. While working on the news feed blogpost about the lack of story for another Prometheus film, I read that Ridley Scott has two films he's working on, and either one are The Forever War...so, what the hell gives?! In 2008, Ridley Scott seemed seemed excited about making this film that took him over 20 years to acquire the rights...then nothing for FOUR years?! What the hell is going on with the Forever War movie?!

The Shadow of Prometheus looming over the Forever War?

While some of us really liked Scott's return to sci-fi films, myself included, but there was some backlash from ALIENS fans, confusion by audiences and while it did make money, the studio thought it could have made more (greedy bastards) and blamed the script writers and Scott. Prometheus was to be the return of Scott to the genre of sci-fi, which two of his previous sci-fi films are considered legendary. But Prometheus was greeted with mixed reviews and marked by recent script troubles for a continuation. Could the shadow of the troubles for Prometheus be looming over the Forever War production? This could be one of the primary reason for the delay. Scott may want to be distance between him and sci-fi for awhile, and the studios may also agree. Promtheus could have cost us the Forever War.

The Script vs. the Book?

There have been no less than three major script writers for the film, David Peoples (who penned BLADE RUNNER and Soldier), Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z), and DW Harper (All You Need Is Kill). What does this say about the translating the classic novel into a big summer MSF movie...alot. While it is only 264 pages, the novel covers the thousand year long Eternal War, several major changes to the human society, and the bizarre military career of William Mandella. Streamlining the length of time, and the skipping over changes to human society and their sexuality could be one way,  but it would undercut the book's plot and point, making it bland. It could be broken up over three parts, much like the 1990 Belgium graphic novels, but somehow that doesn't seem like the most effective use of a Forever War film...it should be done in one shot, allowing the audience to experience the horror of hard-science deep space warfare, and the futility of this Eternal War. There also maybe some uneasiness over showing the entire human race has homosexual (Those Westboro wingnuts wouldn't see it for sure!) and then there is the stasis field that renders the modern weapons of the Eternal War obsolete, forcing the soldiers on both side, to resort to bladed weapons. That could be really strangle on film...and if people have not read the book.

What has me worried: the IMDB Plot and Explaining Time Dilation

Much like above, the plot of the Forever War relates heavily on time dilation...but could a screen-writer explain this phenomena of space travel to an movie going audience that are expecting some along the lines of Starship Troopers? That does not have me has worried has the basic plot outline that appeared on the imdb.org entry for this film. It said that an elite group of soldiers are sent into deep space to deal with an alien threat, then upon returning, these soldiers find that 20 years have passed at home while they were gone on the expedition that lasted a few months. So...does this mean that we are going to see more than one battle? Will we not see the entire Eternal War as per the novel? The plight of Marygay and William? What about the changing sexual habits of Earth? To be honest, I'm not impressed if this all we are going to see of this landmark MSF novel.

Recent Tragedy and a Booming Career?

Everyone that has seen the talent of Tony Scott, mourned his recent passing, and with this being Scott's last brother, we can only image his sadness. This is coupled with a booming career, where everyone seems to want to work with Mr. Scott. At the moment, he is heading up The Counselor, looking at making a film based the classic book A Brave New World, a BLADE RUNNER sequel, a Bible movie, about fourteen other film/TV projects! Prior to the Forever War catching his fancy in 2008, he was getting quite serious about that A Brave New World film.

Ridley Scott Should Look at the Forever War Graphic Novels

Translating the novel to film could be easier for Scott since Marvano already adopted the novel into a series of graphic novels back in 1988, and I am hoping that Ridley Scott has copies of this, or at the very least, his screen-writers. This is due to the wonderful job that was done in streamlining some of the novel's elements, but preserving the spirit and horror of the original text. Before the end of 2013, FWS is hoping to offer a full review of all three of these MSF graphic novels.  


The Other Attempt to bring the Forever War to the Screen

During the late 1980's, director Stuart Gordon met with Joe Haldeman when he was hired to direct a four part TV-movie series based on the Forever War, that would have possibley aired on PBS. When the funding was cut, and the script was transformed into play that ran in Chicago(?) for six-weeks in the late 1980's, and had a budget of $750,000. I've attempt to hunt any information on the stage play, but nothing seems to exist. What does exist, is one or two of the  Neal Adams' concept art for the film, and these are the only images for the aborted effort. Oddly, Stuart Gordon and Joe Haldeman would work on another film the B-grade Robot Jox.

The Timeline of The Forever War film

• October 12, 2008-Ridley Scott confirms that he has secured the rights to the book
• March, 2009-After seeing AVATAR, Scott confirms that the Forever War will be filmed in 3D  and he's got a 'good writer' on the script. It was later confirmed that David Peoples (BLADE RUNNER) was working on the script, which could be the first screenplay for the film.
• Summer 2010-Rumors of another script-writer working on yet another script. 
• August 2010-Screen-writer Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z) is confirmed as writing the four script for the film,
• November of 2012-DW Harper, who adopted All You Need Is Kill, has been tapped to write another script for the movie. Author Joe Haldeman called it "the fourth rewrite"...are we missing someone?
• March/April of 2013-Whole Lot of Nothing...