Fast & Furious producer going ahead with remake of 1997 Paul Verhoeven movie . . .

Producer Neal H. Moritz has hired Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz, two writers on the X-Men: First Class movie, to revamp the Starship Troopers franchise.

Little is known about the project as yet. Will it be a remake of the Paul Verhoeven movie (why!?) or will it go back to the original Robert Heinlein source novel?

The Verhoeven movie wasn’t particularly true to Heinlein’s 1959 book as the Dutch director made use of the platform to throw in snarky comments on the fascism inherent in the book.

(In the novel only soldiers are allowed to vote and public whipping is at the order the day. One senses that Heinlein, who served in the U.S. Navy for five years, took this sort of thing quite seriously.)

At the time critics and audiences didn’t quite get it and the film only made over $121 million worldwide (the budget was an estimated $105 million).

It is open season on Verhoeven movies in Hollywood right now. Moritz is also a producer on the Total Recall remake, which is in post-production right now, and plans are also going ahead with a Robocop reboot as well.

Verhoeven brought his own brand of sly black humor to all these projects and one can only imagine how contemporary Hollywood remakes will simply wash out whatever it was that these films so memorable in the first place.