Bryan Singer To Adapt Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress
This article is more than 2 years old
Any day where there’s talk of an adaptation of a Robert Heinlein novel, that’s a good day to us. Starship Troopers is the probably the highest profile movie based on his work, but his stories have appeared in many forms, and his short, “All You Zombies,” recently made it to the big screen as Predestination. Now it looks like his novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is on the way to theaters thanks to X-Men director Bryan Singer and 20th Century Fox.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Singer is teaming up with Arrow producer Marc Guggenheim to adapt the 1966 sci-fi novel, which is being renamed Uprising, a way less interesting, way more generic title. It’s always disappointing when the adaptation of a book with a cool name gets a bland makeover.
Uprising may be a bit broad, but it at least fits the subject matter. Heinlein’s novel, serialized in 1965 before being published in one volume in 1966, won both a Hugo and Nebula Award. The story revolves around a colony on the Moon that revolts against Earth rule. Set in 2075, a scattering of underground cities dot the lunar surface, populated by criminals, political exiles, and their offspring—it sounds a little bit like a sci-fi Australia in that regard. The population is mostly male, and the society is something like the American frontier, and they fight back against their controllers.
There are themes of revolution, ecological disaster, unusual and unorthodox family structures, integration, and tons more, which should provide Singer and company plenty of fertile ground to root around in.
This isn’t the first time The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has been in development. DreamWorks had a script from Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio a few years back, and Phoenix Pictures was working with Harry Potter producer David Heyman to adapt this. Neither one of these made any headway and both stalled out, the rights ultimately reverting to Heinlein’s estate.
Right now there’s not a whole lot of detail to be had about Uprising. Just because he’s involved, doesn’t mean Singer is going to direct. He very well might, and a lot of people are saying his is, which wouldn’t surprise us, but it doesn’t say that anywhere in the original report, so we’re going to try not to jump the gun. He has a long list of projects in the works as a producer, and he’s also about to helm X-Men: Apocalypse for Fox. That’s set to hit theaters next year on May 27, 2016, but you can bet we’ll be keeping an eye on Uprising as it develops.
Is this something you’re excited about? Would you like to see Singer direct?
