Bruce Willis Wants to Be Will Smith

Posted by Paige MacGregor (paige@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 10, 2008

Someone once told me that when writing an article, you are supposed to put the important things in the title. I only half believe that, so that’s why this article’s title only contains half the important things included in this article (although it alludes to the other half). The first important part of the equation is Bruce Willis–in fact, he’s filming another action movie right now, which is partially to be expected and partially surprising… surprising mainly because, well, he’s old. The second important part of this article is that Willis’ new action/sci-fi thriller, a graphic novel adaptation (what else is new?) titled The Surrogates, sounds a little bit like a tweaked version of Will Smith’s 2004 blockbuster I, Robot.

Jonathan Mostow (U-571, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) is directing the film, which is set in the future during a time when every human has a robotic surrogate that lives their public life for them, allowing them to remain safely at home. Okay, that sounds slightly intriguing. Willis plays a cop (what did Will Smith play in I, Robot? Oh, that’s right… a cop.) who must venture outside the confines of his home in order to investigate a series of robot murders. Robert Vendetti’s graphic novel, also titled “The Surrogates”, was released in September 2006 by Top Shelf Productions, the publisher behind hundreds of other graphic novels with titles like “The Blankets” and “Stripburger.”

On the bright side, some sneakily obtained photographs from the set of The Surrogates appeared online over the past few days, and based on what we’ve seen, it looks like this movie could turn out to be a whole lot more interesting than it might appear. This photo is presumably of one of the robot murders, and it’s certainly not what we pictured one of them to look like. Another plus is that the “robots” will be played (it seems) by real actors, instead of being CGI images of the I, Robot kind.

The Surrogates cast includes Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames, Rosamund Pike, and Radha Mitchell, among others. Currently filming in Boston and various other cities and towns in Mass., The Surrogates has a tentative release date of November 20, 2009.

Photos courtesy of The Milford Daily News

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