The Last Starfighter Reboot/Sequel Announced?

  |  
Apr 5, 2018

Recently screenwriter Gary Whitta (The Book of Eli, Star Wars: Rogue One) broke the news over on Twitter that he is currently working on a reboot of director Nick Castle’s 80’s adventure flick The Last Starfighter.

You can see his tweet below.

Well, the folks over at io9 caught up with Whitta and talked a bit about the “fully developed story that is a combination of reboot and sequel,” and below you will find some choice bits and pieces and then a link to the full piece at the end.

“It’s always been one of my all-time favorites,” Whitta told the site about the original film. “It is a deeply special movie for me. In terms of movies that stirred my imagination as a kid, it’s right up there with Star Wars. Maybe because I was a video game junkie back then, but the idea that playing a game could be a magic ticket to a real space adventure, I just always thought that concept was utterly brilliant. The film is sorely underrated in my view, although it’s endured as a cult classic and every time I bring it up in conversation people seem to just light up. There’s a tremendous undercurrent of fondness out there for it.”

So why is now the right time to bring back the tale?

“The simple answer to that is Jonathan Betuel,” Whitta says. “Jon created and wrote the original movie, it was all his idea, a spec script he wrote while he was working as a waiter in Hollywood in the early ’80s. There was a whole bidding war over that script. In all the years hence, whenever I’ve brought up the idea of a Starfighter reboot in meetings, people would always convey excitement and then say that it’s impossible because the rights are a mess. It’s true that it’s not simple, but part of the key to it is, as I understand it (and I’m not a lawyer), Jon still retains some piece of ownership of the original IP, so no one can make a new movie without his participation. I happened to track Jon down, and 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 honors the legacy of the original film while passing the torch to a new generation. We’re both very excited about it creatively.”

You can read the rest of the interview HERE in which Whitta even goes so far as to say Seth Rogen would make a great Centauri. Check it out and then make sure to let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!

The Last Starfighter was directed by Nick Castle and stars Lance Guest, Robert Preston, Dan O’Herlihy, Catherine Mary Stewart, Norman Snow, and Kay E. Kuter.

BUY IT HERE!

Synopsis:

After finally achieving the high score on Starfighter, his favorite 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.

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