Andrew Niccol returns with a new sci-fi project!

If you want an example of a great and underlooked sci-fi movie, you don’t have to go any further than 1997’s GATTACA. It was the directorial debut of Andrew Niccol, a writer who went on to grab an Oscar nomination for his script for THE TRUMAN SHOW. Sadly the dud that was S1MONE slowed down Niccol’s work. He directed 2005’s LORD OF WAR with Nicolas Cage but five years later he’s finally returning to the world of sci-fi with a brand new script that looks to begin filming later this summer.

I’M.MORTAL is an original script from Niccol that takes place in a future where scientists have discovered how to disable the aging gene. Overpopulation quickly becomes an issue and only the wealthy can actually afford to live forever. (Think LOGAN’S RUN but with money instead of age being the qualifying factor.) The movie specifically follows a poor young man who finds himself the sudden owner of a “fortune of time.” He tries to save his mother but is too late and he arouses the suspicions of the “time keepers,” a corrupt police force looking to make sure people aren’t cheating death.

The announcement comes with the note that those who’ve read the script call it the “most commercial” yet of Niccol’s works. Were GATTACA and THE TRUMAN SHOW not commercial films? They had varying levels of success critically and commercially but I don’t think they were necessarily unconventional films. Whatever the script is, it’s just good to have Niccol back doing some original sci-fi.

Producers are currently looking at a cast that, as you might expect, would all be actors under-25 (as that’s the age people choose to stop aging in the movie).