No sooner did the rights to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress reverted back to Robert A. Heinlein’s estate than another studio has come along to snatch them up. This time, Fox is bringing some A-List names to the project.
Fox has brought Bryan Singer on board — he’s listed as a producer along with Lloyd Braun and Thor Halvorssen in the The Hollywood Reporter’s article. No clue if Fox is also angling to get him to direct. Along with Singer, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim has signed on to write the script.
For reasons passing understanding, the movie’s going to be called Uprising rather than The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Because… why use the recognizable name, I guess.
To be fair, Uprising works as a title. The Hugo Award-winning novel focuses on the rebellion of a lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority from Earth. The leaders of the rebellion — which seem ready-made for film — are a “computer technician”, a young “female agitator”, and an “elderly academic.” Plus, there’s a supercomputer named Mike, who only has a small group that are aware of his sentience, and who supports the rebellion.
Do Fox think the name is cursed? The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress has been in the adaptation pipeline twice before: Once by DreamWorks and once by Phoenix Pictures. Both times, the project failed to materialize, and the rights went back to the author’s estate.
[via Slashfilm]
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