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Smallville Scribes Hired to Ruin Live-Action Robotech Movie

Posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 by Peter Sciretta

Warner Bros has hired new screenwriters for their big screen live-action adaptation of Robotech. Smallville scribes Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have come on board to rewrite Lawrence Kasdan’s previous draft. This is not good news. Gough and Millar were the team behind The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Herbie Fully Loaded, Made Men, Showtime, and the Shanghai Noon franchise (you remember, the Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson western comedy films?). To be fair, they got a story credit on Spider-Man 2...

And to think, Warner Bros gave those two guys the job of rewriting a script penned by the the screenwriting legend responsible for both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back. It’s mind-boggling. The Hollywood Reporter claims that Warner Bros made the move in hopes that it will “bring action and geek cred to the table.”

Geek cred?

The guys who made Smallville?

Really?

Robotech refers to the scientific advances discovered in an alien starship that crashed on a South Pacific island. With this technology, Earth developed giant robotic machines or mecha (many of which were capable of transforming into vehicles) to fight three successive extraterrestrial invasions. At the time of its broadcast, Harmony Gold also launched Robotech through a popular line of comics to be followed by novels, role-playing games, video games, comic books, toys, and other consumer products.

Discuss: How badly will Gough and Millar ruin Robotech?

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Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi, Screenwriting, Warner Brothers, , , ,

  • tobor68
    well, if they stick to a couple of rules they should be fine:

    1. no robots
    2. no aliens

    see? a formula for success!
  • Reed
    It's common to rip on Al Gough and Milers Miller. Here's the deal. Smallville has had it's ups and downs, and I happened to really enjoy season 5 and 6, they were my favorite until 8. Seasons 4 and 7 were awful. Just plain terrible. But the show had some incredibly great stories and some incredibly bad ones, so these guys have some talent. And, yes, the mummy 3 was one of the worst movies I"ve ever seen, but they also wrote Spiderman 2, my favorite superhero movie until the Dark Knight (and I'm a DC guy). So they clearly have the talent to make a good story.
    However I don't think this movie would ever bee good, based on what I read about it. I don't care who writes it, it just doesn't sound appealing (like Herbie Fully Loaded. That was going to such no matter what, so you can't really blame them for taking the job). Al and Miles have made one of my favorite television series, despite some of its rockier periods. Let's not give up on them yet.
  • marz
    ive been waiting for news on robotech but not this kinda news.as a kid,this was my soap opera.one of the only cartoons in its time with an ongoing storyline.im not going to knock it just because the folks who wrote it wrote lousy before.im going to give them a chance and at least see a preview before i get upset.the same goes for dragon ball and street fighter.i love action,i love good effects,and i love anime so i hope they do these movies justice.see you at the movies!
  • Jerry Butler
    omg, more hating on people, Pete.

    I sign on here, and all I see is this guy's ruining this, these guys are returning to this crap. Sorry if everything these days isn't up to the high-brow, cinematic standards of a goofy kid cartoon like Wall-E.
  • Rockme
    First time I'm really enjoying Smallville now that these guys are gone, the last(currently airing) season is the best one that I've watched so far.
  • emily
    Mannn they're going to ruin it.
  • Dr. Lizardo
    *Sigh* What's wrong with people? Why do they need to rewrite it? Does every film have to have 20 writers on it? Whatever happened to movies being written by one guy? It just means its going to be more and more diluted / convoluted with the ideas of more than one person. Wasn't the original script supposed to be awesome?
  • TheDaftPunk
    "rewriting a script penned by the the screenwriting legend responsible for both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Empire Strikes Back"

    Joker.jpg would be appropriate here.
    What the hell, such a mistake.
  • EPIC FAIL...-_-
  • Um.....

    a) Smallville is good. For the most part, at least. Their Doomsday storyline is being done very well, imo.

    b) Who gives a shit about Robotech? How the fuck could something like THAT get 'ruined'?
  • jason b
    james vanderbilt had some bad films before he did zodiac, and plenty of other screenwriters have turned a corner in their careers, where all of a sudden they can give us brilliance. i have to hope these guys can: 1 - because i love smallville. 2 - because i want this to kick soooooo much ass. 3 - i try not to bitch about projects that haven't even been written yet, though i understand that these guys have disappointed people with some of the ways smallville went.

    peter, i thought you use to like smallville, where's the love?

    @ phillip

    i'm with you man, but these guys aren't with smallville anymore.
  • I've never really had a lot of hope for this project and now....well, my interest is nill. Maybe that will change as the movie is cast and footage becomes available.
  • Jason b: The first few seasons of Smallville could be classified as a guilty pleasure. But I watched and enjoyed them knowing that they were bad, very bad.
  • In response to B, you should like one of the people a few years ago that was saying "A Transformers movie? Based on action figures? Lame!"
  • diggitalism
    I've lost all hope at a faithful, nah, a GOOD anime movie adaption. Akira is the only possible gem, but...

    Dragon Ball, terrible.
    Cowboy Bebop to star Keanu Reeves, terrible.
    A dumbed down Ninja Scroll, terrible.
    This, bad.

    Oh well, hopefully after this phase is over we'll get some original stories going again.
  • nelson
    lol you got more faith in akira than ninja scroll LOLOL when akira is more complex
  • Death Squad
    Interesting. I'm loving how cool ridiculous 80s sci-fi is making a big screen comeback. Do a live action Thundercats and we're good.
  • dlb
    this is tremendously bad news for Robotech
  • KeanE
    Nooooo!!!!
  • They're going to ruin one of my favorite animated series aren't they? :(
  • Jack
    most likely, but hopefully they'll do a good job! (slightly optimistic)
  • A guilty pleasure is always much easier to enjoy when it's free. Add in at LEAST $7.00 in theaters, and you have yourself a bomb...
  • Bob
    I really, really need to know how these hack writers get huge franchises like this.

    How is Hollywood so goddamn retarded?
  • heart explodes now
    There's a robotech movie?

    Why can't we have a battletech one!? Battletech would definitely be more for live action. Let's keep anime, animated.

    Mechs onscreen.... oh god. oh god. oh god.
  • Tony
    This is definitely bad news.
  • John R
    "Smallville is good."

    I'm going to stop you right there. By making this admission you've completely invalidated anything and everything you've had to say.
  • Chokinzoku
    This movie won't have the Macross cast or Macross mecha in it anyway, so let 'em ruin it. Big West is not going to. allow WB/Harmony Gold to make a big screen version of the Macross segment of Robotech--it aint happening.If this movie ever gets made, it'll be based on the non-Macross characters from the other segments of Robotech; Southern Cross and Mospeada. So you'll see Charlie Sheen playing Scott Bernard...
  • John R
    WHY??!!! WHY??!!!
  • londongirl
    The Doomsday storylines is good because NEW showrunners have took over the show. G & M drove it to the ground and lost more than 2million viewers weekly. Just the fact that rating are rising since they left is a good indicator that they had no idea what Superman was all about.
  • londongirl
    Agreed!! Seasons 5 to 7 were what drove people to turn their TVs off with their triangles and Lana worshipping. Now that it's back to comic-book related stories, the show is getting back to what it was. And with more viewers.
  • Philipo
    until i see anything substantial (pics/trailer/completed script etc) i cant judge if this will be good or not. i mean i thought that Transformers would suck and i really enjoyed it despite Micheal Bays intense lack of talent so the same could happen here with these hacks actually pulling off a good movie.

    @ diggitalism: i agree with u that hollywood seems to have struck retard gold and needs to start doing some original work (stop with the remakes/reboots/awful-sequels-no-one-asked-for etc) PLEASE
  • dlb
    dude... 20th cetnury fox has their hands on Akira
  • Cat
    Very.

    Smallville has been infinitely better since they left.
  • GregoryV
    I'm disgusted. I have this bad feeling it might turn out to be a bad Sci-Fi version of the Pearl Harbor film.
  • alan117
    Smallville's first four seasons were awesome, after that it started going down hill, and now after they left it's back to being awesome again, and these were the guys that were responsible for it's seasons 5-7 downfall so yeah these guys suck.
  • mi_padre
    damn! they don't learn a thing. the dragon ball movies looks like crap, hollywood should keep away their greedy hands of anime projects.
    smallville is crap, it's like dawsons creek or a cheap soap opera for ladies.
  • 80sOgre
    anybody who loves smallville needs to shut up at this point. like supernatural, it was nothing but a spring board for a bunch of wannbes who looked more like they belonged in gay porn films. the animation in robotech was often bad but when it was good it was great. transformers was more for the kids. the Macross story is a true epic. so just because this film isnt aimed at pleasing your little Emo standards doesnt mean it's Sh*t. but yes this new news sounds like a death blow.
  • bogus
    robotech is nothing without the original version sdf:macross, army of the southern cross and genesis cclimber mospeada!!!!! if robotech fans were not blinded, the "sum of parts" are greater than the whole. robotech is ridiculous but the subplots aka sdf:macross, army of the southern cross and genesis climber mospeada are much better. i second warner bros do a complete rehash of robotech!!!!!!
  • q25XRv hi! how you doin?
  • Ethan
    lmao. You idiots dont like Smallville but you like robotech.
  • Supposedly, Tobey is a fan of Robotech. Maybe he can keep this from turning into a complete POS.
  • Ferrazo P
    No! No! No! Don't change a franchise that's been proven successful - keep this master piece in the hands of a genius (Lawrence Kandan) and you will make millions on this film and many sequels to come. Robotech/Macross, is a special culture and genre; very similar to that of Star Wars except that it kicks ass about three times over...
  • carlito_01
    Being the huge Macross and Robotech fan that I am, I hope that this will not be taken and turned to complete garbage just to satisfy a younger audience (they better damn sure keep Paris Hilton and Miley Cirus out of it!). Hopefully it will also not be butchered up and rewritten to make no damn sense from what the original story is all about. Success for this project means keeping EVERYTHING and EVERYONE intact from the entire series and not just plan on one film but many more to follow. With a great cast and storyline and the right special effects as well, it should be the next great sci-fi action film franchise.
  • Bid Dave
    as a big robotech fan myself, these 2 new guys can make it better, their films made it in top box office. kasdan made good movies 20 years ago, but dont think he can appeal for 21st century viewers, the movie should appeal to more than just robotech fans, and be able to bring in new fans to the franchise, it was the lack of fan base (viewer=demand) that ended the production of the sentienels animations. sure the movie will differ from the series, but the anime did differ slightly from the books. as did transformers movie. but look at the strong will of the fans for part 2! they didnt mind how part 1 was. and did make alot of money in the box office.
  • Namete (optional)
    If we take Dragon ball as a reference for live action animes and smallville as a reference for live action comics, Robotech will be the story of a high school boy bullied by his peers, who stops an invasion and gets the girl.
  • Vollodo
    with thoose two jerks... this will be the new dragon ball movie, WAKE UP WARNER, thoose morons are not capable to do such film, re hire the previous writer, look in imdb for the empire strike back, and guess what is one of the top movies ever, thoose two are newbies thinking they are greatest writers! open your eyes and write childrens comic books, like bunnys and stuff...
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