Alien Legion, The Grittier Star Trek, Goes For The Screen

For a large part of this decade science fiction wasn't really getting anywhere-- it was all about fantastical Lord of the Rings knockoffs and superhero movies, of course. But two things happened simultaneously to change all that-- the craze for graphic novel adaptations inevitably ran into the fact that a lot of them are set in outer space, and Star Trek was a hit, proving that, duh, people will still see space movies if they're actually interesting.

Combining those new twin trends of graphic novels and space, then, is Alien Legion, the long-running series about a military unit laying down the law in outer space. In a new article about the series in USA Today, creator Carl Potts confirms that the series has been optioned for a movie for some time now, and "The script is currently in its third rewrite." Derek Haas and Michael Brandt, the guys behind Wanted about a dozen other projects, are working on the new draft for Jerry Bruckheimer, and have already compared the thing to Pirates of the Caribbean. Remember, if a movie is not trying to be like The Dark Knight, it's inevitably trying to be Pirates.

The notion of a grittier Star Trek sounds like something a studio would try to get going anyway, so it's probably a good thing that a backstory and characters already exist for it. I have no idea why USA Today is bringing up Alien Legion now if the film has been in development for years, but maybe this means we should look out for an announcement of some kind soon enough.