The Hollywood Reporter brings news that Dallas Buyers Club screenwriter Craig Borten has been hired to pen Sony’s film adaptation of IDW’s Zombies Vs. Robots. The comic tells the story of robots who must protect earth’s last human—an infant— from a horde of zombies who salivate for one final, delicious brain. Sony has had the rights to the project since 2011, when it acquired them for Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes shingle.
Hiring the Academy-Award nominated Borten is a sign that Sony intends to treat the issue of android-on-ghoul violence with the seriousness it warrants. The project has also been renamed Inherit The Earth, presumably because Zombies Vs. Robots invokes association with the kiddie movie Monsters Vs. Aliens, or the attention-draining phone game Plants Vs. Zombies, neither of which carry much gravitas. Instead, the new title makes solemn reference to the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus Christ taught his disciples that time travel is an abomination, zombies must be cast out of the garden, and that blessed automatons shall deliver the final salvation of mankind.
Befitting a project of such sober import, Sony has also brought on board director Andrew Adamson, whose works include the sagas of societal oppression, Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party.