After an exhausting filming and promotion schedule for Lincoln, Steven Spielberg has indefinitely postponed production on Robopocalypse, an adaption of the Daniel H. Wilson novel which had Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway set to star.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, quoting a representative of Spielberg’s saying, “the project was too important and the script is not ready, and it’s too expensive to produce. It’s back to the drawing board to see what is possible.”
Production on Robopocylpse was scheduled to begin this spring, with Fox and Disney set to distribute the DreamWorks production in 2014. Spielberg had previously set up the project for a January 2012 start date, but that was taken off the table due to Lincoln.
Cabin in the Woods director and co-writer Drew Goddard adapted the 2011 Daniel H. Wilson novel, although it looks like the screenplay is not quite ready. The report also notes that clues of this decision could have been long coming, after he told 60 Minutes in an October 2012 interview he could do an action film “in my sleep at this point in my career,” adding “it doesn’t attract me anymore.”
Here’s the story synopsis:
Not far into our future, the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us. Controlled by a childlike—yet massively powerful—artificial intelligence known as Archos, the global network of machines on which our world has grown dependent suddenly becomes an implacable, deadly foe. At Zero Hour—the moment the robots attack—the human race is almost annihilated, but as its scattered remnants regroup, humanity for the first time unites in a determined effort to fight back. This is the oral history of that conflict, told by an international cast of survivors who experienced this long and bloody confrontation with the machines. Brilliantly conceived and amazingly detailed, Robopocalypse is an action-packed epic with chilling implications about the real technology that surrounds us.