I’d missed this until now, but it looks like Robert A. Heinlein’s long short story, or short novel, ‘The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag‘, is being made into a movie.
Being of a somewhat optimistic disposition, I hope this will turn out well. The attempts so far to turn Heinlein novels into movies have been disappointing (The Puppet Masters) or infuriating (Starship Troopers).
But the movie is apparently being directed by Alex Proyas, of The Crow, Dark City, I, Robot and Knowing fame. I think that the way he did I, Robot in particular was brilliant. He took Asimov’s main device from the series of stories — exploring the unexpected consequences of the Three Laws of Robotics — and made them the centre of a story broadly appealing enough to pull in nearly $US350 million internationally.
Apparently plenty of people didn’t get it, including this dill who misses the point that the puzzle in this movie was that ‘man’s creation tries to get the better of him’ even though man explicitly tried to prohibit this through the Three Laws.
I shall forever love this anyway for the aftermath of the car crash scene.
So I wish Proyas well and hope Heinlein at last gets the kind of movie he deserves.