I’ve long wanted to see Ridley Scott return to the sci-fi genre and when we heard last year of his potential sci-fi project on Stonehenge I got excited.

Not completely because of the Stonehenge plot but just because it showed his intention to get back into the genre again, especially as he so scathingly attacked other recent attempts at the genre calling them “unoriginal, seen it all before, been there done that” and that they had an overuse on special effects to get them through sticky situations.

Thankfully he is not just going to sit on his great filmography and say “Look I did Blade Runner and Alien, beat that!” but is actually going to get out there and show us again how it’s done.

Speaking to Eclipse Magazine, Scott talked of his delight in returning to sci-fi but it from the sounds of things, it won’t be for that Stones project…

I am going to do one. I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month. That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film that I am doing now in England.

Ah, finally he has got to work on Nottingham with Russell Crowe but what sci-fi book is he talking about?

Is it another Phillip K. Dick novel, which he so confidently and artistically created the unforgettable Blade Runner?

Scott also spoke a little on Blood Meridian, his long time in development adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel…

We got it down as a screenplay and the problem is that it is so savage. But that’s what it is. If you did it properly it would be an X-certificate. But you can’t apologise for the violence and you can’t quantify the violence and you shouldn’t try to explain the violence. It is what it is…an exercise in brutality, savagery and violence. For the most part it is probably relatively accurate. It shows the flipside to Dances With Wolves of how the United States was probably taken. It was taken by the throat.

Scott also mentions that his upcoming C.I.A. thriller with Crowe/DiCaprio previously titled Body of Lies will now be called House of Lies (strange name change, can’t say I approve). That one is due out in November.

source - coming soon