Since 2016, when he directed Gods of Egypt, Alex Proyas has been sticking to short films. But the director of Dark City (pictured above) and The Crow (the 1994 version, not the impending reboot) is headed back to science fiction feature films: He’s writing and directing an adaptation of Karel Capek’s play R.U.R., which was originally published more than 100 years ago, in 1920.
R.U.R. stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” and the play is often credited as introducing the word “robot” to the English language. It’s set in a robot factory and, as Deadline explains, follows the story of a woman named Helena who “visits the island factory of Rossum’s Universal Robots to emancipate the robots from capitalist exploitation, with catastrophic results.”
Helena will be played by Mallory Jansen (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s Madame Hydra). Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace) and Lindsay Ferris (Ash vs. Evil Dead) are also set to star.
R.U.R. has been adapted quite a few times, including as multiple BBC Radio productions. It’s referenced in everything from Doctor Who to the Transformers comics to Peter Brown’s book The Wild Robot (which has also just been adapted as a film).
According to the Australian film magazine If, Proyas will film R.U.R. as an entirely virtual production, in a “a bespoke virtual production space.” He told If, “I’ve substantially rewritten the play to make it contemporary because it talks about what’s happening today in terms of AI, but through the lens of this wonderful, classic tale, so a lot had to change.”
Proyas’s best-known film is arguably I, Robot, so he’s not exactly a stranger to the genre. But it’s the cult classic Dark City—which was first released in a terrible studio cut and then restored to the director’s vision—and the tragedy-stricken The Crow that probably earned the director his most passionate fans. We have been waiting for him to do something stylish and science fictional for a very long time—and maybe this will be it.
R.U.R. does not yet have a release date.
