
Bonaventura
In his first project deal since signing an overall Paramount producing pact, Lorenzo di Bonaventura will team with Hyde Park's Ashok Amritraj and Jon Jashni to produce "The Next Soldier," a tech-heavy action film.
Story concerns a high-tech battle among four young test pilots and a renegade military machine that has run awry and is capable of mass destruction. The pilots are outfitted with robotic exoskeleton suits that enhance their chances against a machine that threatens to destroy the world.
Jared Butler and Lars Norberg are writing the script.
"The tone of the movie is 'The Matrix' meets 'Independence Day,' and who better to do it than Lorenzo, who as an executive was integral to putting ('The Matrix') together," Amritraj said. "This is meant to be a bloodless tentpole action adventure, man vs. machines. It will have lots of military cutting-edge technology and robotics, equipment that actually exists."
The writers previously scripted "Fire and Water," a project being developed at Fox as a directing vehicle for John Moore ("Behind Enemy Lines"). The scribes, who are repped by BWCS, hatched the movie after researching the possibilities in emerging technology.
"We realized the soldiers of the next generation will be able to do things once thought to be too complicated," Norberg said.
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