Deadline reports that 20th Century Fox, is developing a live-action feature film version of adaptation of Issac Asimov’s 1954 novel The Caves of Steel.
Simon Kinberg, (X-MEN writer) is producing via his Genre Films production company, based at Fox. Henry Hobson is attached as director, with John Scott 3 (yep, that’s his moniker) set to write the screenplay.
Hobson is know primarily as a titles designer for films such as SHERLOCK HOLMES and RANGO, while Scott 3 works with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Seems like an odd pairing, but the two are first collaborating on a teenage Zombie film entitled MAGGIE.
Asimov’s The Caves of Steel was first published as a serial in Galaxy Magazine in 1963, and quickly picked up as a novel by Doubleday.
The tale is a murder mystery sent on an over-populated Earth about three thousand years in the future. Here agoraphoic humans live in domed cities and rarely if ever see the outside world.
The rich and powerful Spacers’ (people whose ancestors left Earth for other planets) ambassador has been murdered and police detective Elijah Baley is forced to work with their chosen investigator, the humanoid robot R. Daneel Olivaw.
This is a double-edged insult, as the Spacers are generally too disdainful and suspicious of Earthmen to spend time in their presence, and robots are equally distrusted and restricted on Earth. Bailey and R. Daneel slowly come to bond during the potentially explosive investigation.
The book was a great success, and lead to the sequels The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn . The characters have ties to Asimov’s Robots series and, more loosely to the Foundation series.
THE CAVES OF STEEL was previously adapted for live action on BBC televsion in 1964 starring Peter Cushing as police detective Elijah Baley and John Carson as R. Daneel Olivaw. That version, directed by Peter Sasdy, with a teleplay Terry Nation (DOCTOR WHO, BLAKES 7), is considered lost, with only a few fragments remaining.
