Steven Spielberg talks Robopocalypse

With The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse now released Steven Spielberg has been focusing on Lincoln, the biopic starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the sixteenth President of the United States. Once post-production is complete he’ll move onto his next project, Robopocalypse, which sees the director return to the sci-fi genre for the first time since War of the Worlds in 2005.

In a new interview Spielberg said Robopocalypse is set in the near future and focuses on “a global war between man and machine”.

From Time Out Film (via The Playlist):

‘I had a great time creating the future on “Minority Report”, and it’s a future that is coming true faster than any of us thought it would. “Robopocalypse” takes place in 15 or 20 years, so it’ll be another future we can relate to. It’s about the consequences of creating technologies which make our lives easier, and what happens when that technology becomes smarter than we are. It’s not the newest theme, it’s been done throughout science fiction, but it’s a theme that becomes more relevant every year.’

Here’s a detailed synopsis of the novel by Daniel H. Wilson:

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.

In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans—a single mother disconcerted by her daughter’s menacing “smart” toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a ‘pacification unit’ go haywire—but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late. When the Robot War ignites—at a moment known later as Zero Hour—humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united…

A July 2013 release date is set, so shooting will probably begin later this year. Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard wrote the screenplay.