Ridley Scott has been working on developing a big screen adaptation of the book The Forever War for about 25 years. The last thing I heard about the film was back in 2010 when Blade Runner scribe David Peoples was hired to write the script. It's now being reported that the film is now going to be written by D.W. Harper who most recently worked on Tom Cruise's sci-fi film All You Need Is Kill.
The sci-fi novel was written by Joe Haldeman in 1974, and Scott described it is as “a science-fiction epic, a bit of The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner, built on a brilliant, disorienting premise.” Scott was originally supposed to make that film after he made Blade Runner and Alien, but it didn't happen due to some rights issues. Fox 2000 now owns the rights to the book, and it looks like it's finally moving forward.
I'm looking forward to seeing Scott take on the challenge of bringing this story to the big screen. I'm sure he'll end up doing a great job with it. Hopefully Harper can pump out a solid script!
For those of you not familiar with the story, here is the description of the book:
The Earth's leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand--despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But "home" may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries...