Warner seems to be very excited about an adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s Japanese sci-fi war novel, All You Need Is Kill. While the spec script market has been in the doldums for the past 18 months, with very few deals and those that have sold scoring comparatively small paycheques, Dante Harper’s script based on the Japanese book got Warner Bros. so excited that they’ve paid him over a million dollars for it, rising to $3 million if the movie actually gets made.
The studio wants to movie on the project quickly, with Deadline reporting they’ve set up an agressive pre-production schedule, which is likely to get it in front of the camera within 12 months. You can see why they might think it’s worth pressing hard for, because despite the slightly ungrammatical title, the plot is the sort of high concept premise that’s bound to get studio execs excited, and they can already see how it might work, as while most spec deals are put together when the movie is still only an idea, Harper has actually written the script for this one already.
All You Need Is Kill puts a Groundhog Day plot device into a futuristic alien invasion storyline. A raw recruit, pressed into battle against an alien species, gets killed in action. But he is reborn each day to suffer the same fate. Eventually, he notices that he is becoming a better warrior and that other circumstances are changing, which might be the key to altering the outcome. Doesn’t that sound like it could be cool, even if it is a bit like a computer game?
No director is yet attached, although there probably will be soon if Warner wants to get the movie into production as fast as it says it does.