I’ve opened a Formspring account, where anyone can ask me a question, and I’ve been flooded with queries. One that I haven’t answered yet asks who are the five most underrated directors working today, and while I’m not sure he makes the top five, Andrew Niccol definitely is a contender.

Niccol hasn’t made a lot of great movies (he has in fact made one legitimately terrible movie, S1m0ne), but he’s made a bunch of interesting movies. And most of those interesting movies have been scifi – films like Gattaca and The Truman Show. Now he’s got another interesting sounding scifi movie -and another scifi movie that will be tackling social issues – with I’m Mortal.

The great premise is this, according to Heat Vision Blog:

 The story is set in the not-too-distant future where the aging gene has been switched off. To avoid overpopulation, time has become the currency and the way people pay for luxuries and necessities. The rich can live forever, while the rest try to negotiate for their immortality.

The protagonist is a poor young man who comes into a fortune of time, though too late to help his mother from dying. He ends up on the run from a corrupt police force known as “time keepers.”

I love it! Scifi! Idea based scifi! The Heat Vision Blog likens the script to Logan’s Run and says that the no-aging aspect means it’s a movie that can be filled with pretty young faces, since everybody stays 25 forever.

New Regency is negotiating to get the script, while Strike Entertainment – the folks doing the prequel to The Thing – will produce.