Alternate histories seem to be big in Hollywood at the moment, whether it’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or undead meets Austen of Price & Prejudice & Zombies. JJ Abrams snapped up the rights to another one just over a year ago, Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett steampunky graphic novel, Boilerplate.
Now things are finally moving forwards as Deadline reports that Abrams has hired writers JD Payne and Patrick McKay to come up with a script for the film version. The graphic novel centres on a fictional version of the world’s first humanoid-robot, which was built in the early 19th Century to replace men on the battlefield. The robot is shown fighting alongside Teddy Roosevelt and it even circled the planet with the US Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. The book originally came about when Guinan started writing about the robot on a website and people began to believe it was real.
JD Payne and Patrick McKay are also currently writing Deadliest Warrior, a movie adaptation of the popular Spike TV series of the same name, and penned Goliath, based on the biblical tale.
General movie news courtesy of Movie Muser