The alien invasion movie is a proven subset of the sci-fi genre. It’s ripe for all kinds of interpretations, from pure action like Independence Day, to social fears like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Now, there are two brand new, very different alien invasion ships are being shopped around Hollywood.
An image from Steven Spielberg’s alien invasion movie, War of the Worlds.
The Tracking Board reports that two spec scripts, Moonfall and The Fall, are currently out to major Hollywood studios. Each has an impressive pedigree, but are spec scripts, the fancy term for scripts written for free, and usually original.
Moonfall was co-written by Independence Day writer Roland Emmerich along with Harald Kloser and Spenser Cohen. It’s about “an unlikely band of misfits who, when an asteroid collides with the moon, must come together to travel to the moon and harness the alien technology left behind to stop it from colliding with the earth”. Sort of Armageddon meets Independence Day.
The Fall sounds much smaller and, frankly, a bit more interesting. Think The Road meets Aliens, it’s by Black List writer Pete Bridges and is about “a newly divorced couple who, when they find themselves in the middle of an alien invasion, must survive a dangerous real-time journey on foot from downtown Atlanta to the suburbs, where their young children are home safe”.
Both of these certainly sound like they have potential but, at the moment, they’re up for grabs.