20th Century Fox has acquired a currently untitled outer space pitch for producer/director McG (Terminator: Salvation) to produce and probably direct . McG will produce the project through his Wonderland Sound and Vision production banner.
Dave Callaham (Doom, The Expendables) is attached to write the screenplay, although at the moment Deadline, which broke the story, has absolutely no story details. They do however say it’s a big-budget adventure movie set in outer space.
It isn’t certain if this will be the next movie for McG (after This Mean War is released later this year, that is), especially as he is also attached to direct Ouija for Universal Pictures, which that studio is trying to get made as a priority.
Ever since Avatar, studios have been buying up seemingly every pitch and script they can find that’s set in deep space, but as yet virtually nothing has gone into production, largely because while execs are wide eyed for those Avatar bucks, space-set sci-fi is tricky to pull off and difficult to do cheaply – and therefore a big gamble. After all, Star Wars created a million clones, but few found success and many bombed horrifically. While Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is about to go into production, it’s still unclear how many other space-set, tentpole tales will make it onto the big screen, or if the screenplays will just end up in the studio archives. Perhaps McG can make it happen.