Empire has published a few snippets from their interview with Steven Spielberg for their new issue where they discuss his plans for Lincoln as well as when he expects to begin shooting Robopocalypse.
First, on the Lincoln side of things, he’s looking at an October start as they take on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “[amazon asin=”0743270754″ text=”Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”]” but Spielberg says it was “too big a book to be a movie, so the Lincoln story only takes place in the last few months of his Presidency and life.”
He adds to that, “I was interested in how he ended the war through all the efforts of his generals…but more importantly how he passed the 13th Amendment into constitutional law. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war powers act and could have been struck down by any court after the war ended…But what permanently ended slavery was the very close vote in the House of Representatives over the 13th Amendment – that story I’m excited to tell.”
When asked if this will essentially be Amistad 2 he told the mag, “Amistad is much more visual than Lincoln is going to be. It feels very much like a procedural. It shows Lincoln at work, not just Lincoln standing around posing for the history books…arguably the greatest working President in American history doing some of the greatest work for the world.”
He was also asked about his upcoming adaptation of Daniel H. Wilson’s book Robopocalypse, which I am actually reading now and would compare to Max Brooks’ “[amazon asin=”0307888681″ text=”World War Z”]”, except instead of the zombie uprising it’s a robot uprising told in the same short story method using transcripts of events, interviews, etc. to tell the story of how thinking and reasoning advanced machines nearly decimated the human population.
Spielberg says of the project, “It reminded me of Michael Crichton. I’m in pre-production on it right now. I’m hoping to start shooting the picture some time in ’12. I don’t exactly know when, hopefully some time this summer, for a ’13 release.” Drew Goddard (Cloverfield) is working on the script for a planned July 3, 2013 release.
