Whadya know? A mere three days after 300 racks up a $70 million opening weekend, another dark-tinged graphic novel is being put into production. The Surrogates is based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, the rights to which have just been bought by Disney for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines' Jonathan Mostow to direct.
The story is set 50-odd years in the future, in a world where people use robot surrogates to live their lives for them - working, interracting, even eating and shagging - while they experience it all vicariously from the comfort and safety of their La-Z-Boy (or whatever) at home. Trouble starts when two surrogates are destroyed, apparently by lightning, and a pair of detectives start to suspect that someone is out to destroy the machines and force people to - dear god no! - live their own lives again.
It's a rather tasty premise, and while it could all slip into I, Robot territory there's every reason to hope that it will be stronger than that (kinda underrated) actioner - that is, if it ever gets made. Mostow hasn't made a film since T3, despite being attached to several, and he'll be developing this alongside The Sub-Mariner, the adaptation for which he's writing for Marvel and the still-rumbling on possibility of Terminator 4. However, the fact that he has lined up his T3 co-writers Michael Ferris and John Brancato suggests that this is reasonably high on his To Do list, so fingers crossed.