Everything crappy will be remade. Everything not crappy will be remade as well. That’s what’s happening in Hollywood right now. For instance, the third great Paul Verhoeven movie is about to get remade. He had Total Recall, then RoboCop and now Starship Troopers.

This version will be more grounded in the book and a lot less violent than the campy first movie. Why does it have to be that way? As you recall, that one had giant bugs impaling people with their claw thingers.

The more expensive a film is, the harder it is now to make it that violent. With Recall in particular, we made a conscious choice to keep it tonally closer to something like Minority Report. It gives the studio, and us as producers, the opportunity to reintroduce it in a new way.

Oh, OK. Well, that makes sense. I mean, who in the hell is going to spend massive amounts of dough on a Starship Troopers reboot? OK OK, so producer Toby Jaffe, what are your plans for this new Starship Troopers film?

Verhoeven took [Robert Heinlein's 1959 novel] from one extreme and made it almost comical, whereas our job is to be a little more faithful to the book, and ground it a little more…. Verhoeven made his movie a critique of fascism whereas Heinlein was writing from the perspective of someone who had served in World War II. Y’know, one man’s fascism is another man’s patriotism…

That sounds interesting, tell me more.

Working in a visual effects renaissance as we are, we have the ability to do so much more now. We can do the Jump Suits [armoured exoskeletons from Heinlein's novel], for example, which I don’t think they could have done before.

Jump Suits? Holy smokes, that would make me excited if I wasn’t actively trying not to be excited. You see, what made Starship Troopers special was that camp and comical vibe. Without it, I’m not sure what to expect. So let’s move on to this Van Helsing thing.

"I'm so sorry we made this movie."

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will be producing this new Helsing, and they’re two of the dudes that made the new Star Trek film so awesome. Kurtzman also has his new movie People Like Us coming out this weekend and it’s getting some awesome reviews. So let’s let Kurtzman tell us his vision for the new Van Helsing.

Well, I don’t want to give away too much, because we are actually at the very beginning of talking about what to do with it. But I do feel like the Van Helsing that Anthony Hopkins plays in [Bram Stoker’s] Dracula is sort of the parody version of it, and the Van Helsing that Hugh Jackman played was obviously in a different place as well. I think that these kinds of movies have evolved a lot since then. You know, The Dark Knight was a major, major corner-turning moment in the way that genre and superhero stories could be told. Really grounded in reality. Really grounded in really cool things. That’s what I’d like to do without sacrificing the fantasy element. We aspired to do that as well on Trek, you know, keep it “real.” That’s such a different franchise than Batman, but that’s really what we wanted to do. And we’d love to do that with Van Helsing.

I’m in. I’m totally in. If they can take the Van Helsing story and base it in reality like a Star Trek or Batman then hot damn I am 100 % in. Kurtzman is quite the talented writer as well, so hopefully he lends his talent to that aspect and delivers on his exciting talk. [Crave Online, Empire via /Film and /Film]

starship troopers, van helsing