Exclusive: Carolco producer Mario Kassar talks to us about his forthcoming sci-fi action film, BOT. Here are the first details.
NewsIn its 80s and 90s heyday, Carolco and its studio co-founder Mario Kassar specialised in such larger-than-life blockbusters as Rambo: First Blood Part II, Total Recall and Terminator 2.
Twenty years on, and the Carolco brand has been revived by Kassar and new CEO Alex Bafer, with one of its first projects being a new incarnation of the fearsome horror-drama, Audition. Beyond that, Bafer also hinted at something more akin to Carolco's sci-fi action films of old; it is, he said, "a Terminator-type sci-fi summer blockbuster."
That film now has a name: it's called BOT, and it's the first in a potential trilogy of movies penned by Tedi Sarafian - the story writer behind, among other things, 2003's Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines.
"BOT's the kind of movie I used to produce in the old days of Carolco," producer Mario Kassar told us. "A big, action kind of [film]. It's a little bit futuristic, but not set too much into the future - I don't want huge flying space craft, or whatever. It's set, maybe, 10 or 20 years or so from now. It has nano-technology in it, and good guys and bad guys. It's a very humane, interesting story."
The plot sounds like a cross between John Wyndham's classic The Midwich Cuckoos (later filmed twice as Village Of The Damned) and The Terminator. In the not-too-distant future, more than a hundred identical infants are born with intellects far beyond our own. Dubbed "Starchildren," they grow up and use their huge brains to take control of the entire planet. Soon, the ordinary human population is decimated and then enslaved by a sophisticated breed of nano-technology-driven robots:
"Robots unlike anything we've even seen before," Carolco's logline reads. "Godlike machines that can download a man's [consciousness] like a video game off the internet."
It sounds like an ambitious project, particularly given that it's a potentially expensive original concept rather than an adaptation or remake with a pre-installed audience. At this early stage, we don't know too much more about BOT - directors, stars and release dates aren't currently confirmed.
We do know that the first bit of concept art, however, is by Josh Nizzi, the artist behind such tech-filled hits as The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the Transformers films.
You can read Bot's full synopsis over at Carolco's site, and we'll bring you our full interview with Mario Kassar very soon.
