It's sort of amazing that it hasn't been tried already. Hollywood is pushing forward with a version of Joseph Conrad's seminal "descent into madness" novel, set in outer space. Heart of Darkness already gave us Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
Top image: "Heart of Darkness" by Zach Stern on Flickr.
The science fiction version, called simply Into Darkness, will keep the basic storyline of Captain Charles Marlow trying to bring a shadowy trader, Kurtz, back to civilization. Presumably Kurtz goes into hiding on some alien world, or a spooky space station someplace.
It'll be directed by Peter Cornwell (The Haunting in Connecticut) based on a script by Tony Giglio (Death Race 2) and Branden Morgan. (Giglio and Morgan have been a director and an actor, respectively, and they met when Giglio directed Morgan in the movies Timber Falls and In Enemy Hands.) And the film is being produced by Radar Pictures, which gave us the Riddick movies, plus The Box, The Invention of Lying and Jumanji/Zathura.
Can the director of The Haunting in Connecticut do justice to Conrad's intense psychological horror? Will this be a lovely addition to the canon of space madness films, or another Pandorum?
We'll have to wait and see. The article in Variety also mentions that Giglio is writing the screenplay for Death Race 3, so there's always that. [Variety]