I understand that Charles Leavitt is hot shit because he wiped out the conflict diamond trade with his screenplay for Blood Diamond, but his superior conscience does not give him the right to commit plagiarism. And if a script about the human race rebelling against their alien conquerors isn’t a blatant ripoff of V, then it’s a blatant ripoff of Independence Day or They Live or Born in East L.A., and I won’t have it.
Directing this desecration of the greatest network television miniseries next to Amerika is Wolfgang Petersen, the once highly-regarded filmmaker who’s spent the better part of the last twenty-seven years not living up to the promise of Das Boot (his only good film since 1981: the kinda underrated In the Line of Fire). But Columbia’s exec Doug Belgrade believes Petersen is “just the right director to handle ‘Uprising’s’ mix of action, suspense and drama.” He’s also just the right director to handle Richard Dreyfuss, who enjoys slugging web journalists during set visits.
Actually, it’d be a hoot to see Richard Dreyfuss playing the leader of the invading alien hordes; what a great homecoming for Roy Neary (who liked the human race so much, he abandoned his family!). If the extraterrestrials are supposed to look like short, middle-aged Jewish men, this should be a done deal.
There’s no start date set for Uprising, nor is there a release date, so the film could easily fall apart over the next few months. That would probably be for the best.