Rogue One scribe Gary Whitta has taken to social media to share concept art for a reboot of Nick Castle’s 1984 sci-fi film The Last Starfighter, announcing he is working on the project with co-writer Jonathan Betuel.
Whitta stated on the post via twitter: “You might recognize the ships. Thanks to the amazing Matt Allsopp for creating these images for us.” He was also asked if it was a reboot or a sequel to which he only responded: “Forgot to cc @Sethrogen since I know he’s a fan :)… Okay, back to work… might have a bit more for you later”
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Okay, probably shouldn’t show you this so early but here’s a little something I’ve been tinkering on with my co-writer Jonathan Betuel. You might recognize the ships. Thanks to the amazing Matt Allsopp (lead concept artist on ROGUE ONE) for creating these images for us. pic.twitter.com/CIobLYYRHk
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) April 4, 2018
He later went on to confirm via io9, that he is indeed working the reboot with the original writer Jonathan Betuel;
“After I was done pestering him with all my fanboy questions about the original film we started to talk about what a new version might look like. Since then we’ve spent so many hours working on it I’ve long since lost count, but right now we have a fully developed story that is a combination of reboot and sequel that we both think honours the legacy of the original film while passing the torch to a new generation.
“We’re both very excited about it creatively… It’s a passion project for Jon and me both. And I know we have a great movie here. But we still need to deal with some remaining biz stuff before we can really move forward. We’ve had a lot of talks with Universal. We’re determined, one way or another, to make this happen.”
The synopsis for the 1984 The Last Starfighter reads:
After finally achieving the high score on Starfighter, his favourite arcade game, everyday teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) meets the game’s designer, Centauri (Robert Preston) — who reveals that he created Starfighter as a training ground for developing and recruiting actual pilots to help fight a war in space. Whisked away from the banality of his trailer park life to a distant alien planet, Alex struggles to use his video game-playing skills to pilot a real ship, with real lives at stake.
The film was directed by Nick Castle and starred Lance Guest, Robert Preston, Dan O’Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Norman Snow, and Kay E. Kuter.
