Ridley Scott has announced that he's going to make a science fiction film as his next project, marking the first science fiction project for him since Blade Runner and a film which even he regards as the only original science fiction film since.

It seems he's been waiting some twenty years to get his hands on the rights to a book, a book that is now set to become his next science fiction film, and possibly something wholly original. Any ideas what that book could be?

Well neither do I since he won't actually give anything away about the project. Speaking to Eclipse Magazine through Empire he reveals:

"I waited for a book for 20 years and I have got the book. I am not going to tell you what the book is but that film is going to probably be written within the next month. That will definitely be what I do next after Nottingham, the Robin Hood film (with Russell Crowe) that I am doing now in England."

You'll remember that back in August of last year he said:

“There's nothing original. We've seen it all before. Been there. Done it. There is an over-reliance on special effects as well as weak story lines.”

So that would suggest that this book is something special and Ridley Scott could be bringing us a pretty unique film, and perhaps even visionary. I mean he's saying there's been nothing original since Blade Runner and he's not made anything in the science fiction realm since, and then to wait twenty years to get the rights to a novel before returning to the genre? That sounds pretty serious stuff to me.

Update: 05/06/2008
The word going round the internet at the moment, from Rope of Silicon, is that the novel could well be Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and quite frankly I'm rather underwhelmed by that news. I've never read the novel, but I did think that I would be blown away when I heard what Scott was up to and I'm not. I guess I'll put that down to not having read the novel. Have you?