Wolfgang Petersen tackling The Grays

Veteran director chooses Strieber's alien abduction novel for his next project, his first movie since the hideous remake of Poseidon.

By Matt Holmes /

After directing the worst movie of his recent career with Poseidon, Wolfgang Petersen is to turn to the science fiction genre for his next movie. That film being an adaptation of Whitley Strieber's novel The Grays, a movie which we previously heard Sam Raimi was been touted for. In truth though in 2007, if it's a big movie... Raimi's name has been linked, many probably without substance. But the news today is that it's definitely going to be Petersen and a summer 2009 release is likely, with production beginning in a couple of months time. The news broke on the Whitley Strieber's official website, which I found over at AICN via Publisher's Weekly.
Danny and Katelyn Callaghan are a happily married couple oblivious that both took a saucer ride as kids€”until a UFO sighting in their Indiana town awakens subliminal memories and excites their genius teenage son, Conner. Meanwhile, in a secret facility in Colorado, Air Force Lt. Lauren Glass learns that the Roswell incident really happened, and that for decades the surviving ETs have been sharing their advanced science with us. In exchange, these "Grays" have sought to rejuvenate their dying species by genetically manipulating human receptacles for their DNA. But some military hard-liners see this as a betrayal of humanity, and they launch a manhunt that brings them to Indiana and the Callaghans' doorstep.
Boy, this really sounds like The X Files doesn't it? Strieber is an author who doesn't have the greatest reputation in the world (mainly because of his revelation in the mid-80's that he was abducted by aliens) but his material is sure getting popular for movie adaptations these days. It all started in 2004 with The Day After Tomorrow which originated from a book that Strieber co-wrote with radio host Art Bell in the late 90's and then this year we heard that Michael Bay was eyeing up his new novel 2012: The War of Souls for a movie adaptation. Put that with Petersen who is just coming off from directing Poseidon and with a plot that feels at least a decade old and it's easy to be skeptical about this movie at such an early stage. Though I would love to see a couple of good science fiction movies in the future, especially after Ridley Scott's comments about the originality in the genre being dead. It's really hard to argue that the genre is going through a bad patch right now. Are we sick of space and looking up into the skies just like we all got sick of Monument Valley and the Wild West?