Ridley Scott’s The Forever War drafts a new writer

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Ridley Scott is still fighting that FOREVER WAR. It has been over two years since we last wrote about the sci-fi epic that Sir Ridley is attempting to get off the ground, but that doesn’t mean the war is over. Far from it: according to Deadline.com, Scott and 20th Century Fox have brought in a new writer to mold Joe Haldeman’s ambitious novel into a screenplay.

The writer in question is D.W. Harper, who recently crafted another complex futuristic script, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL. That one deals with time-jumping amid an intergalactic battle with extraterrestrials, and this one does too, so I suppose it’s a perfect match.

This news may come as a slight disappointment to those who were excited to see Scott re-teaming with his BLADE RUNNIER scribe, David Webb Peoples (the first writer assigned to the screenplay) on this new project, but we must consider the greater good here, folks.

The premise: The Earth’s leaders have drawn a line in the interstellar sand–despite the fact that the fierce alien enemy they would oppose is inscrutable, unconquerable, and very far away. A reluctant conscript drafted into an elite Military unit, Private William Mandella has been propelled through space and time to fight in the distant thousand-year conflict; to perform his duties and do whatever it takes to survive the ordeal and return home. But “home” may be even more terrifying than battle, because, thanks to the time dilation caused by space travel, Mandella is aging months while the Earth he left behind is aging centuries…