I received word recently that Hollywoodland has greenlighted a feature film version of Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (that’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, for you nerds who have not yet earned your degree in nerdery).  Capek was a hardcore serious Czech writer who was totally depressing, and his work does not translate well into “Hollywood Blockbuster,” so my initial reaction (hope?) is that the film version will be sober, serious, and just as cerebral as the play was.

For the uninitiated, Capek is credited with coining the term “Robot,” and R.U.R. is one of the first “cyborgs take over humanity” stories.  It was densely philosophical, and I’m just praying to god that they don’t do to it what they did to I, Robot.

The good news?  The apparent director, James Kerwin, is a small-fry artsy fartsy type, whose most recent work is described by random people at Wikipedia as “sci-fi noir,” which sounds just about perfect for R.U.R. to me.

So, no guarantees, but we might have a pretty good adaptation in the works.

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