Details on Joseph Kosinski's New Project 'Archangel'

There are suddenly a lot of options forTron: Legacydirector Joseph Kosinski. Four years ago he was directing CGI-laden commercials for popular video games properties, before his Tr2Nconcept video wowed Disney executives and Comic-Con geeks.

Fast forward to 2008 and he’s officially the director of Disney’s $170+ million revival of a decades-old science fiction classic, one that ultimately stopped short of $400 million worldwide. Tron: Legacywasn’t particularly a smash hit once you tabulate all the numbers, but big enough for Disney toplan another sequeland land Kosinski plenty more high-paying jobs.

As of right now, Kosinski is lining up to directOblivion(also calledHorizons) possibly at Universal with mega-star Tom Cruise attached to lead the bleak, post-apocalyptic story of an Earth populated by alien scavengers. Disney scooped up the pitch, which came in the form of a stylized graphic novel (images here) and eventually a rewrite byThe Departedscreenwriter William Monahan, but later dumped it when the violent future didn’t fit with the Mouse House’s squeaky-clean image. But, no hard feelings from the studio, since Kosinski is attached to direct Tron 3 and has long been involved with The Black Hole, a“re-imagining” of the 1979 sci-fi film about a lost spaceship hovering on the edge of an abyss.

Where was I? Oh, right.  Now that you have the backstory,Deadlinereports Joseph Kosinski is attaching himself to direct another science fiction story: Archangelfor New Regency, originally written by Andrew Will and set for a rewrite by Adam Cozad.

The real-world concept introduces a secret military group operating out of Area 51 that monitors the skies for incoming bogeys. When alien spaceships sneak through a sophisticated satellite targeting system, it’s up to an elite unit called the Archangels to swoop in on the UFO and erase their existence. With the help of a scramjet— a supersonic aircraft outfitted with reverse-engineered alien tech that allows the squad to reach a destination anywhere in the world in 30 minutes— Lt. William Koenig and company descend on the“Greys,” a race capable of quickly morphing to appear human. While there are other military grunts, Koenig is the heart of the story, a stoic soldier recruited after the deaths of his wife and daughter to an otherworldly biological plague.

Will’s script is gripping and it’s easy to see why it caught the attention of those involved, but, in the explosive third act, Koenig devolves into an unstoppable Rambo type and the plot becomes a run-and-gun actioner as the two sides sling plasma rounds at one another. The plot’s tense, militaristic atmosphere and slick, clandestine operations are abandoned just as the gravity of the Earth-ending scenario should hit. However, I’m not sure the talented Cozad is the right screenwriter for the redo since his ownDubai(which has been refashioned asMoscowfor the new Jack Ryan adventure) suffered from the same issue.

Scott Free Productions, the joint operation of director brothers Ridley Scott (recentlyRobin Hood) and Tony Scott (Unstoppable), are producing the sci-fi thriller, hoping to advance another budding career in the process. Scott Free is the same company that scoured for young talent, then pushed Ridley Scott’s son-in-law Carl Erik Rinsch into feature filmmaking (he’s at the helm of47 Ronin). I, for one, am ready to see more of what Kosinski can do.

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