NEWS: Justin Theroux To Pen Space Invaders...

This week has been a week full of WTF moments. Hell, the past few months have left me uttering those three words more than I would like to admit.

Well, add another instance of the famous three letter acronym to the book, and this time, it may actually end up being the rare instance where a project may ultimately make a well made film.

It appears as though Justin Theroux, Tropic Thunder and Iron Man 2 scribe, has been hired to pen a new draft of the astronaut rom-com, Space Invader. The actor-turned-screenwriter is taking over the project which had the original draft penned by Mike Lisbe and Nate Reger, for 20th Century Fox. According to sources, the concept is actually interesting and sounds pretty decent.

Here’s the concept from an early scriptshadow review of the first draft:

Doug, the space shuttle janitor, watches helplessly as his astronaut girlfriend heads off on a 3 month International Space Station mission with Stamp Majors, all-American astronaut superstar and philanthropist (think a cross between a real life version of Buzz Lightyear, and the character Owen Wilson plays in Meet The Parents ). He begins to think that the two are getting it on and decides to…um…intervene. Really liked this one. It’s pretty broad but there are some great touches. We’ve all been in that position where our boyfriend/girlfriend is going to be in close quarters with some attractive dude/chick for a weekend trip or something and in the back of our minds are thinking, “Should I go there?” Of course we never do (well, ahem, most of the time we don’t) but in this case Doug takes it to the extreme, and decides to actually fly his way up to the International Space Station to make sure his girlfriend doesn’t bang Stamp.

With Will Arnet still attached, the project seems to still be on the ground, but instead of being a Fox Atomic production, it’s shifted to the father studio, which could be a good sign. I do like the premise, and like ScriptShadow points out, the story seems pretty relateable.

This is what makes projects like this, Risk, and Battleship intriguing. NO ONE thought of this style of story when playing the original game. This lack of any basic story allows the screenwriters, Theroux being a favorite of mine, to really just go off into any tangents that they want, and while this one just sounds like a rather broad rom-com, it also sounds rather interesting.

At least it’s not off the deep end like Battleship, and not completely crazy stupid like Monopoly, so this is easily my most anticipated board game/old video game adaptation announced yet.

What do YOU think?

Go see something good!