JC set to produce 'Seven Samurai In Space'. Hang on, he already did that movie in 1980...

ComingSoon's revelation that Avatar supremo James Cameron is set to produce a new SF actioner based on Akira Kurosawa'a The Seven Samurai can't help but sound familiar to anyone who remembers the 1980 Roger Corman Star Wars knock-off Battle Beyond The Stars, which not only exactly fits the Seven Samurai description but on which James Cameron was an art-director and VFX supervisor (with the Skotak brothers he would later employ on Aliens), turning out some impressive sets and spaceship sequences on a legendarily low Corman budget.

The new Cameron project appears to be Shane Salerno's Doomsday Protocol, which we last heard of over a year ago. When Protocol was announced as "an epic sci-fi adventure in the vein of 'The Seven Samurai' involving a group of aliens and humans with various abilities who are brought together to save Earth", more than a few people thought of BBtS, and Cameron's involvement makes me wonder if the Salerno effort might not be melding into an unofficial or semi-official remake of Jimmy T. Murakami's space western.

The only difference is that in Battle the planet being saved was not the Earth, but some Star Wars-style 'distant culture' that happens to resemble Earth pretty closely. The lone warriors recruited to save the besieged planet included thermal aliens, a space cowboy played by George Peppard and a ruthless assassin played by Robert Vaughn.

At the time, the movie was the most expensive Corman outing to date, and was a box-office success, not least with the dads who appreciated the little-hidden charms of recruited Valkyrie warrior St.Exmin (Sybil Danning). Additionally it remains the only science-fiction film ever to feature a spaceship with breasts.

CS got the juice from Production Weekly's Twiitter feed, the whole of which states: "James Cameron is developing a Shane Salerno-scripted sci-fi action script for Fox, described as an "event" film set in the future."

Coming Soon