Actor Keanu "The Matrix" Reeves will star in a 're-imagining' of director Robert Wise’s 1951 sci-fi film "The Day the Earth Stood Still", now being prepped for a Vancouver shoot, with Twentieth Century Fox having booked every available studio in town.
Reeves will play the lead role of the alien 'Klaatu', originated by actor Michael Rennie.
Scott Derrickson will direct with Erwin Stoff producing from a script by David Scarpa.
The new film was originally tent-poled for a May 2008 release.
Premise of the original feature, based on the short story "Farewell To The Master", appearing in pulp magazine "Astounding" (October-1940) by author Harry Bates, starts with a flying saucer circling the world, then landing in Washington D.C. where a man (Michael Rennie) and seven foot tall robot 'Gort' emerge.
The visitor, 'Klaatu', produces a gift for the President, but a soldier panics and shoots the item out of his hand, knocking him down. In retaliation, Gort vaporizes tanks and weapons with laser-vision.
Klaatu is taken to hospital, demanding a meeting with all world leaders, but the nations are too disorganized to agree to his request.
Klaatu eludes his captors, checking into a boarding house under an assumed name, where he meets a beautiful single mother (Patricia Neal).
He contacts scientists to organize a meeting and arranges a demonstration by stopping all power on Earth for half-an-hour so that he can announce to the world that if humanity does not stop the escalation of the nuclear arms race, Gort, and other police-robots will destroy the world.
Gort was played by 7'7" tall actor Lock Martin.
For the new film, it is not known if Fox will adhere to the original short story , set in the future, with 'Gort' (aka 'Gnut') revealed as the true master and 'Klaatu' his servant.
