Way back in July 2018, Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones teased that he was beginning work on a film adaptation of 2000 AD‘s venerable SF war strip, Rogue Trooper. Remember this tweet?
As promised… pic.twitter.com/6y3pzn2Cn1
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) July 15, 2018
This very much excited fans of the British anthology comic, which remains a largely untapped potential source of big screen IP – a couple of Judge Dredd flicks and Richard Stanley’s 1991 indie sci-fi, Hardware, aside – and Rogue Trooper has no small amount of cinematic potential.
Set on the desolate, heavily polluted and irradiated world of Nu-Earth, Rogue Trooper follows the exploits of the titular Genetic Infantryman, a cloned super-soldier who is the last survivor of his unit. Hunted by both sides of the conflict he’s embroiled in, he tries to track down the traitor whose actions led to the deaths of his comrades. Three of those dead comrades, however, live on in a way, their minds encoded on “biochips” that Rogue carries on his military equipment. The character was created by writer Gerry Finley-Day and artist Dave Gibbons, who went on to work on Watchmen and Green Lantern, among other titles.
Jones, whose other credits include Warcraft (oh dear) and Mute (no), has now issued an update, saying. “We’re in the exciting bit right now of concept-arting-out some of the elements of the script. The script is really looking pretty good now. It’s getting to the point where we’re going to have to start casting and making the thing. It really does look very good.
“I think we’ve come up with a really smart way to approach it,” he added. “Hopefully, [we’ve] learnt the lessons from previous 2000AD films, where they were either not loyal to what the original comic was, or, in Dredd’s case, just done at slightly too big a budget to actually be successful, even though the film was critically well-received. I think we’ve really kind of nailed this one. So, it looks good. It looks good that we’ll get to make it and I think people are going to really like it.”
So, there’s a reason to be cheerful right there. More news as it rolls in.
