Whether you see it as a brilliantly subversive satire of jingoistic propaganda or just a fun, goofy little flick about killer space bugs, 1997’s Starship Troopers continues to hold a special place in the hearts of many a sci-fi fan. You can therefore imagine that writer Ed Neumeier will pique the curiosity a lot of people with his claim that we could be seeing the first film’s cast make a comeback for a new TV series.
As well as penning the script for Paul Verhoeven’s interplanetary actioner, Neumeier also worked on the property’s two live-action sequels, and also as the 2017 animated film Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars. Now it seems that he has his sights set on a TV show, and when HN Entertainment asked him if he’d be interested in bringing back the old cast, the scribe said that the team is already discussing the idea:
“Well, I think they can. I don’t want to jinx anything, but we are talking about trying to do a television show that is based on that idea.”
The original Starship Troopers featured turns from the likes of Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris, Jake Busey and Michael Ironside, most of whom didn’t come back for the sequels. For a lot of fans, a reunion of the old gang may therefore seem long overdue, especially if the result can provide a favorable alternative to the upcoming movie reboot being penned by Baywatch scribes Mark Swift and Damian Shannon.
Speaking of which, Verhoeven has previously expressed his skepticism about the adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959 novel, and it seems that Neumeier has some doubts of his own:
“Well, I have mixed feelings about it [the reboot] because I think that what we did with the first Starship is almost not repeatable in a way… I based the structure of Starship Troopers when I was writing it, the structure of WWII propaganda films that the studios made between 1941 and 1944. We don’t really talk about those movies anymore, but that had a very particular structure and they were made during a conflict and they didn’t have an end-point as with Starship ends they’ll keep fighting.”
As it stands, both the movie reboot and the TV show may still be a long way from completion, but regardless, it sounds like we might be getting two competing Starship Troopers releases in our future. In the meantime, we could also see another of Neumeier and Verhoeven’s properties make a comeback with the upcoming RoboCop Returns.
Published: Jan 25, 2019 07:51 pm