Chappie’s Neil Blomkamp Tackling Fresh Starship Troopers Movie

In the winter of 1997, Dutch auteur Paul Verhoeven somehow managed to sneak Starship Troopers, an eye-popping satirisation of Robert A. Heinlein’s eponymous 1959 man-vs-alien-bug book, through the studio system. Like much of Verhoeven’s oeuvre, Starship Troopers — the third part of the Dutchman’s ‘sci-fi trilogy’, also comprising Robocop and Total Recall— was widely misunderstood upon release (despite a well $121 million box office showing), only going on to be critically reappraised after garnering a cult following in the years that followed. Now, THR is reporting that 28 years after Verhoeven did his part, Chappie and District 9 director Neil Blomkamp is gearing up to do his with a brand up-to-date adaptation of Heinlein’s hugely influential novel for Sony.

Genre aficionado Blomkamp will be directing this up-to-date take on the conflict between humanity and alien ‘Arachnids’/’Bugs’ from a self-penned script, and will produce the film alongside longtime collaborator and wife Terri Tatchell. But anyone hoping for a straight-up redux of Verhoeven’s movie and its ineffable blend of on-the-nose satire, bug-based slaughter, and shockingly adept commentary on America’s potential susceptibility to Nazism/Nazi-like ideology should approach Blomkamp’s upcoming movie with caution. As THR‘s sources are keen to stress, the South African filmmaker isn’t looking to emulate Verhoeven’s movie, famously led by the likes of Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, and Neil Patrick Harris, but rather to return to the source material as he looks to bring the story of rookie soldier Juan “Johnny” Rico’s rise through the Terran Federation’s military ranks.

This isn’t the first time attempts have been made to retool Starship Troopers for a 21st century audience. Back in 2012, Total Recall remake producer Toby Jaffe told Empire plans for a more faithful adaptation of Heinlein’s book were being made. Then, after crickets on that front for almost half a decade, in 2016 Baywatch scribes Damian Shannon and Mark Swift came aboard the project, only to drop out soon after. But given Blomkamp’s past work in the sci-fi, er, space, we have every reason to be cautiously confident that if anyone can crack a fresh spin on Starship Troopers in an age where Verhoeven’s film already feels less and less like satire by the day, then it’ll be him. Now come on you apes! You want to live forever?