Starship Troopers is a curious beast. It was a flop on release in 1997, making just $120 million on its $100 million budget. It was derided by critics, and those critics themselves were mocked for not “getting it”. It all stems from decisions made by director Paul Verhoeven.
Anyone who has seen Netflix’s excellent The Movies That Made Us instalment on RoboCop, or the equally wonderful 4hr long RoboDoc: The Creation Of RoboCop, knows that Verhoeven is… unique!
He decided that the militaristic nature of the novel by original author Robert A. Heinlein should be mocked, so he made the whole thing a satire based around a fascistic future World Government. That crazy Dutch!
Over the years, Starship Troopers has become something of a cult classic. In my opinion, it is nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, but it is still great fun, highly quotable, and gave us the eternal question of Carmen vs Diz – which would you choose?
Now, a new report says that a remake of Starship Troopers is in the works at Sony Pictures. According to a report by Screen Geek, their sources claim the studio is developing the project. Interestingly, it is said to be a remake of the movie rather than a new adaptation of the 1959 novel.
Both the book and the film tell the story of a 23rd century war, and teenager Johnny Rico (played by Casper Van Dien in the movie) and his comrades serving in that conflict. There have been many low-budget direct-to-video sequels based on the property, but nobody ever took any attempt to revisit the world completely seriously. Will they this time?
Even worse, could we end up with another Total Recall remake? We all remember how that went.