Netflix has been doing a lot of amazing work with their Netflix originals lately, but they’ve also made some very shrewd business partnerships to create content for the streaming service. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War was picked up by Netflix for development into an original film. The deal was announced today, with the author chiming in with some Q&A on his personal blog.
While the review hasn’t made it back over to Techaeris, you can read what former editor Chris Wieninger thought of the first book in the series in his review over on MOARGeek. The story follows a 75 year old widower named John Perry, who signs up for the military. In the future, interstellar wars are fought by senior citizens who sign up at retirement in exchange for a brand new body enhanced with cybernetic and bionic parts. The thinking here is that the experience and knowledge gleaned from full life lived can be transferred into a younger and more athletic body, though the young, athletic recruit cannot easily gain the same knowledge and experience quickly.
The movie will be produced by Jon Shestack and Madhouse Entertainment with Scalzi serving as one of the Executive Producers. Since we’re so early in the process, there’s no casting or directorial news to speak of.
This marks the third try at developing Old Man’s War onto the big (or small) screen, as Scalzi notes in his Q&A:
Hey, wasn’t Old Man’s War in development as a movie, and a TV series, before?
Indeed it was. It was in development at Paramount for a while as a movie, and then at Syfy as a TV series.
What happened?
It just didn’t work out. Both times, really smart folks did a really excellent job and tried to make it happen, but the entertainment industry is what it is, and the stars didn’t align.
But this time will be different!
Well, yes, I hope so. It would be nice. I think we have the studio and producers to make it happen.
Hopefully the third time will indeed by the charm for fans of the books. What do you think about Netflix picking up Old Man’s War? Who would you like to see in the production? Tell us all about it in the comment section below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
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