Neill Blomkamp's directing Starship Troopers

Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers is a divisive book and the 1997 adaptation by Paul Verhoeven is even moreso. The novel helped to kick off the military science fiction genre by showcasing a future where humanity was at war with an alien foe, all while Heinlein, through everyman character Johnny Rico, muses about the responsibilities of citizenship and fascism. And there's power armor.

The book has been enormously influential, with books like John Scalzi's Old Man's War, Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War or games like Helldivers 2 and Halo taking cues from it.

Heinlein's novel can be endlessly argued over when it comes to his politics and intent: I've generally come to think of it as a provocative book, but not one that's necessarily advocating for an all-out fascist society. Verhoeven's adaptation went in a different direction, playing out as a satire. I watched it not too long ago and was amused at how outlandish it was, and how plenty of viewers seemed to miss that. It's since spawned a small franchise, with a handful of sequels.

With the advances in CGI and a writing environment in Hollywood where screenwriters pay a bit more attention to the books, I've been wondering when we'd see a new take on Heinlein's novel. There was an attempt back in 2011 with Thor and X-Men: First Class writers Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz were tapped to write the screenplay, while Mark Swift and Damian Shannon (Baywatch) had their own attempt. Neither seemed to get anywhere beyond that.

Now, we've got a new contender, and it's one that I'm particularly keen on: Sony has hire Neill Blomkamp, the director behind District 9, Elysium, and Chappie, to write and direct a new adaptation. The Hollywood Reporter says that he'll be producing the film along with his wife, Terri Tachell (who co-wrote District 9 and Chappie), which won't be a remake of Verhoeven's film, but an adaptation that goes "back to the source material."

Blomkamp has a kinetic filming style that feels like it would lend itself really well to this sort of adaptation. And he's very familiar with military SF: his debut film would have been Halo, had studio problems not killed it, while enhanced and cybernetic soldiers have popped up in some of his other projects. And he did get something of a Halo project filmed: Halo Landfall, a 7-minute commercial for Halo 3 that doubles as a neat short film within the franchise itself.

Watch that and tell me he wouldn't be able to grapple with the complexities that Starship Troopers brings up, alongside the slick gear porn, industrial design, and power armor that the film would require. And I think he's one of the most conscious filmmakers out there: between his better known films and his more experimental projects like Oats Studios, he has a good bit of messaging that runs through his works. District 9 was a fantastic film that explored apartheid in a science fictional structure, while Elysium remains one of those films that feels criminally underrated to me: a great take on class that only feels like it's gotten more relevant with each passing year.

Obviously, this might not get made. Blomkamp's Halo film never made it over the finish line, as well as the Alien and Robocop films he had worked on, and the same with his adaptation of Tom Sweterlitsch's fantastic novel The Gone World. That's the nature of the film industry. Hopefully, this one will hit theaters down the road.