Robopocalypse is coming back from the dead, this time as a television series. The robot-uprising story that Steven Spielberg spent years trying to make as a movie is now in development for TV, with Ron Howard attached to direct the pilot.
The Hollywood Reporter reports that Imagine Entertainment and Akiva Goldsman's production company are developing the series together. Goldsman will write the pilot and serve as showrunner, while Howard is attached to direct the first episode.
Spielberg remains involved through Amblin Entertainment, which is executive producing the series. Development is being led by Imagine's Brian Grazer and Jeb Brody alongside Goldsman and Howard, with Greg Lessans and Rachel Wizenberg also on the producing team.
The series is based on Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel Robopocalypse, set in a near future where the technology that runs the world turns against humanity. The machines are controlled by a powerful artificial intelligence called Archos, and the story follows humanity's war against its own creations.
The novel is told through accounts gathered after the war, jumping between soldiers, engineers and ordinary people caught up in the uprising. That structure hands a series far more room than a single film had, following the outbreak from the first machine malfunctions through to the final resistance.
Howard said what drew him to the project was "the thought-provoking themes and humanity at its center," and he praised Wilson's vision of the future. "Daniel created a future that feels both startling and increasingly plausible," Howard said, adding that he was thrilled to work with Goldsman again.
The pairing has history behind it, since Howard and Goldsman first teamed on A Beautiful Mind. That film won Howard the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture, while Goldsman won for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the two later made The Da Vinci Code, which earned more than $760 million worldwide.
The road here has been a long one, because Spielberg optioned the novel in 2010, before it was even published, and planned to direct it himself. Drew Goddard wrote a draft of the film version, and Chris Hemsworth and Anne Hathaway were attached to star at one point.
That version never happened, as Spielberg postponed the film indefinitely in 2014. Michael Bay came aboard to direct in 2018, but his version also fell apart, and the project has sat dormant ever since.
No network or streamer is attached yet, so the series still needs a home before cameras roll. Goldsman, who has spent recent years as a co-showrunner on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, will lead the search with the pilot script he is writing.
