Y: The Last Man creator Brian K. Vaughan is set to write a remake of the iconic sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. Released in 1956, Forbidden Planet is an unofficial, loose sci-fi reimagining of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The story follows the crew of the starship C-57D as they arrive at the distant planet Altair IV to solve the mystery of what happened to a 20-year-old missing starship, which leads them to uncover a mystery involving a relic from a long-perished race.
Nearly 70 years later, a remake of Forbidden Planet is finally happening. Deadline reports that Brain K. Vaughan, best known as the creator of the critically acclaimed comic series Y: The Last Man, is writing a script for the Forbidden Planet remake at Warner Bros. Vaughan has contributed to many television shows, including Lost, Under the Dome, and The Runaways, which was based on his own Marvel comic. Emma Watts, a former head of film production at both 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures, is signed on as the film’s producer. Watts is no stranger to sci-fi: during her time at 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), she oversaw the development of films like I, Robot, The Martian, and Avatar.
Forbidden Planet is a landmark piece of science fiction, with the film’s Robby the Robot becoming a pop-culture icon that changed how robots were depicted on film, and was the first film to feature faster-than-light travel. In 2013, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for its cultural importance and significance.
This is not the first attempt at remaking Forbidden Planet. James Cameron briefly considered it, but much like his other big 1950s sci-fi remake, The Fantastic Voyage, it never happened. New Line Cinema spent years developing a remake before DreamWorks tried to develop one in 2007. Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to Forbidden Planet in 2008, and J. Michael Straczynski was attached to work on the remake, but it was canceled in 2009, and since then, no progress has been made.
A Forbidden Sci-Fi Remake
With Forbidden Planet being such an iconic piece of Hollywood cinema, it is surprising how long it has taken to get to a remake. Theoretically, if it gets released within three to five years, that would place it at 71 to 73 years after the original movie came out, roughly the same amount of time between 1933’s King Kong and 2005’s King Kong. This could make Forbidden Planet a high-profile remake that lots of people want to be involved with, and many will be watching closely to see if it can live up to the original. For an entire generation, this will be their first exposure to the classic tale, and for others, they will get to see the iconic visuals of the original conveyed like never before.
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A remake of Forbidden Planet certainly brings with it plenty of new creative challenges. Will the remake update the visual aesthetic of the original to make it more modern, or will it opt for maintaining the original’s 1950s sci-fi aesthetic, which would help it stand out among other similar films in recent years, like Interstellar and Dune? There are plenty of great directors we’d love to see take on Forbidden Planet, but it will take some time to get there, as Brain K. Vaughan has only just begun work on the script. Given Vaughan’s track record with sci-fi comics like Y: The Last Man, Paper Girls, and his hit sci-fi series Saga, Warner Bros. has hired the right person. Hopefully, this will work out better for Vaughan than his planned Silver Surfer movie.
- Release Date
- March 15, 1956
- Director
- Fred M. Wilcox
- Runtime
- 98 Minutes