Sony Pictures to Remake ‘Starship Troopers’

Another week and another remake announced to make you scratch your head in exhaustion. Word is going around that the 1997 cult-film Starship Troopers will be getting revamped for the big screen. Vulture reports that Sony Pictures producer Neal Moritz (Fast Five, Battle Los Angeles) has lined the project up, already acquiring screenwriters Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz to pen the script. Miller and Stentz are just coming off a successful summer, having helped pen this summer’s Thor and X-Men: First Class while having past success in television, writing for Fringe and the wildly underappreciated Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. News of this remake continues the trend that director Paul Verhoeven’s movies seem to be the most “remade” in Hollywood—his films Total Recall and Robocop are already well underway in production.

The original film focused on a future where Earth is ruled over by a military regime, at war with an alien species living on the other side of the Milky Way—affectionately called “The Bugs”. After the Bugs direct an asteroid to destroy the city of Buenas Aires, Earth declares war and three high school friends (Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards and a psychic Neil Patrick Harris) find themselves enlisted in the fight against the Bugs. The movie isn’t exactly known as high-brow, though it did get an Oscar nomination for visual effects in 1998 (imagine that). It wasn’t the greatest box-office success, but made enough passes in the home video field to earn cult status while spawning two terrible sequels. Admit it: you loved Starship Troopers 3: Marauder.