Australian sci-fi director and surprisingly a huge favourite of legendary film critic Roger Ebert (he thought
Dark City &
Knowing were among the best films of their respective years) has become attached to produce & direct
AMP - an as-yet-to-be-written novel from
Daniel H. Wilson that Summit Entertainment have delved deep into their pockets to buy. The high-concept, probable tentpole revolves around a world in which technological experiments to heal the disabled goes too far, turning them into supermen. That sounds Proyas-like, right? The word is the director & Summit won the bidding war against Paramount and Working Title after pitching a modest
District 9 mix of 'sci-fi action and political allegory' that would shoot in Australia which obviously impressed. AMP (novel to be published next June) was perhaps so in-demand because Wilson is the author of the similarly incomplete novel
Robopocalypse which
has caught the eye of Steven Spielberg for a Transformer-style epic which incidentally is now somewhat in limbo given the January 2012 start date remains in tact, despite Spielberg's commitment to
make Lincoln next winter. Perhaps Lincoln will shoot October - Robopocalypse in February - which if you add
Tinin and
The War Horse would be four movies in quick succession, similar to his The Terminal - War of the Worlds - Munich schedule five years ago.
No screenwriter is hired just yet for AMP and we would expect there won't be one for a while with Wilson still scribbling away on the book. Proyas himself probably still hopes to make
Dracula Year Zero, an origin movie for Bram Stoker's undead character which was to star
Sam Worthington whose
commitment to War of The Titans may have scuppered matters.