Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, Black Swan, doesn’t hit theaters until December, but the director has already landed his next gig. At one point Aronofsky was attached to both the upcoming Robocop remake and the next Wolverine film, but has now chosen to bring Machine Man to the screen. Machine Man is unique in that is originally saw light as a serialized story with author Max Barry writing and releasing each page one day at a time beginning March 18, 2009 and finishing December 1. Since then Barry has refined and expanded the story and it is due to be released as a full novel in 2011.
The story, as described on Barry’s site in the Machine Man FAQ is as follows: “A man loses a leg in an industrial accident and decides to build a better one. Because that’s the kind of guy he is. He gradually gadgetifies himself, which attracts the attention of his employer, the Better Future corporation.”
Presumably, any early ideas Aronofsky had for Robocop can now be realized in a wholly original way with Machine Man. Barry will be an executive producer on the film. No word on who is handling the script, but hopefully it will at least be closely supervised by Barry. I am really looking forward to this as I love all of Max Barry’s books and Darren Aronofsky has the right sensibilities and quirkiness to do justice to any one of Barry’s books. I hope that this does very well and kick-starts the film adaptation of Barry’s phenomenal book Jennifer Government, which has been in the hands of George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh for a while now.
