Earlier today, IESB reported that James Cameron was circling the project which is true. At press time, Cameron was supposed to meet with Straczynski and I don't have knowledge if they done so yet but I do know that Cameron has flipped for the current draft.
For starters Straczynski's draft is PREQUEL to the 1956 sci-fi classic! But that is not all, Straczynski is planning to make Forbidden Planet into a trilogy of films! More on that in a sec.
According to sources, the prologue to the script contains the following: Two ships traveled to Altair 4, a planet orbiting a star 16.7 light years from Earth. The first ship, the Bellerophon, came to explore that world. The humans on board encountered the relics of the Krell civilization for the first time and exhumed their dangerous past. The Bellerophon was never heard from again. Twenty years later, a second ship, a C-57D Starcruiser, came to investigate the dissapearance of the Bellerophon and her crew.
The original 1956 Forbidden Planet told the tale of the second ship. What Straczynski's draft is about is the never-before revealed tale of the first ship, the Bellerophon.
So what of the supposed trilogy?
Sources also tell me the last page contains a epilogue where depending on the financial reaction to Forbidden Planet, Strazynski could create the following three film franchise.
Movie Three tells the story of the second ship to arrive at Altair 4 to investigate what happened to the Bellerophon. They discover Morbius and his "daughter," who is desperate to get off the planet and out into the rest of the universe, where her power would nearly be god-like...a fate we are spared when Morbius sacrifices his life to keep her there and eliminate the Krell homeworld once and for all.
Because movies two and three would have some overlapping cast members, but not all of them, they could be easily shot concurrently or back to back.
Straczynski personally states in the last paragraph that what is cool about this new movie is that events shown completely change the meaning of the original Forbidden Planet without changing a frame of film. Altaira's attempt to seduce or inveigle the crew comes across as manipulative, using them to get off the planet. Straczynski also states that this has value to geeks of which he is one.
