Terry Matalas, the showrunner who steered the ultimate season of Star Trek: Picard to new scores and important heights, has been tapped to put in writing an replace of the 1985 cult sci-fi film Enemy Mine for 20th Century Studios.
Set in a future the place mankind is warring with a reptilian alien species, Mine starred Dennis Quaid has a human pilot and Louis Gossett Jr. as an alien who crash land on a desolate planet. Each have deep-seated hatred for each other, however are compelled to beat their prejudices to outlive. Issues are taken up a notch when the human pilot should care for the alien’s child when the reptilian is now not ready.
Mine was the English-language debut of German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, who took over the challenge after twentieth Century Fox fired unique director Richard Loncraine throughout manufacturing. The imbroglio, which necessitated reshooting the movie, ballooned the funds, with extra woe coming when the film crash landed on the field workplace.
Years later, nonetheless, the film loved a reappraisal, with many lauding its themes of tolerance and respect, incomes it a cult following.
The unique movie was based mostly on a novella by the sci-fi creator Barry B. Longyear. The novella was initially printed in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction journal in 1979. The story received the Nebula Award that 12 months for greatest novella. It was adopted by two sequels and finally printed as a trilogy titled The Enemy Papers.
No producer or director is presently on board.
Matalas earned his stripes within the sci-fi TV world, the place he was the creator and showrunner of the 12 Monkeys TV collection and exec producer and showrunner of season 4 of the rebooted MacGyver collection.
Nonetheless, it was his work on Picard that made studio heads into followers. First becoming a member of Picard as a author in season two, Matalas grew to become the showrunner for the third season, injecting a targeted vitality on a listless present and making that closing season one for the Star Trek books. Followers and audiences perked up – the present cracked the Nielsen streaming charts – as did critics, with Matalas incomes a WGA nomination for his work.
Alas, CBS opted to not transfer on with a Star Trek: Legacy Matalas spoke of within the press, however Star Trek’s loss appears to be the achieve of now a number of Disney divisions. Picard caught the attention of Marvel head Kevin Feige, who set him because the showrunner for a brand new untitled Marvel Tv collection centered on the character of The Imaginative and prescient and will hit Disney+ in 2026.
And Picard additionally caught the attention of twentieth Century Studios president and fellow Trekker Steve Asbell, who invited the multi-hyphenate into his portfolio. Mine now marks Matalas’ first movie deal because the success of Picard. (Enjoyable truth: Matalas, Feige and Asbell had been on Trek podcast Inglorious Treksperts earlier this 12 months collectively defending Star Trek III: The Seek for Spock.)
He’s repped by CAA and Nameless Content material.
ENEMY MINE, from left: Louis Gossett Jr., Dennis Quaid, 1985
twentieth Century Fox Movie Corp./Courtesy Everett Assortment