By now, you should know the formula: Steven Spielberg generally (with a few exceptions) follows his Oscar bait, dramatic pictures with blockbuster popcorn stuff. Hell, this year alone (in a span of a few months) we’ll get dazzling, animated, comic adaptation “The Adventures of Tintin” followed by the WWI story “War Horse.” This fall Spielberg will finally shoot his long-gestating dream project “Lincoln” with Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead, but after that? It’s back to making some of the best multiplex entertainment out there.
As you might remember, last fall, after nearly a year of rumors and speculation, Spielberg officially came on board to direct “Robopocalypse” which is exactly what it sounds like. Penned by Drew Goddard and based on the book by Daniel H. Wilson, the film will chronicle an epic war between the human race and robots (duh). So yeah, you can already imagine the budget on this will be sky high, so no surprise it’s going to take two studios to bring it to the big screen.
Deadline reports that DreamWorks and Fox will co-finance the movie, with Disney distributing in the U.S. and Fox overseas. Phew. That’s a lot of hands in the pie. In this era of studios remaining extremely cagey about spending lots of dollars (please see Universal‘s string of cancelled movies this year) Spielberg is about as close as it gets to a sure thing. His summer movies are events, and have been continual smash hits around the world. Sci-fi is a genre that has largely served him well (“War Of The Worlds,” “Minority Report“; but let’s not talk about “A.I.“) and it’s kind of exciting that he’ll be stepping back into that realm. And with a premise that promises explosions and effects, this thing is geared up to print money in multiple stacks.
“Robopocalypse is slated for a July 4th, 2013 release. “Lincoln” is currently on the slate for a fall 2012 release and Spielberg will likely stay focused on his long developing project to make sure he gets everything right.