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I have not yet had a chance to fully express my disappointment about The Day the Earth Stood Still, but you should know that it does not fall into the category of great space movie or great remake. Sadly, it’s been a little while since we’ve seen a great big space movie, has it not. Sure, TV lovers have Battlestar Galactica and J.J. Abrams has Star Trek in the works, but lets face facts: I haven’t seen a really great space movie since Serenity.

And that’s what excites me about what Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth told Frosty at Collider yesterday on the press tour for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The Forrest Gump and Munich scribe described his original idea for a “big space movie,” which could be “somewhere between the intelligence of 2001 and the mythology of Star Wars.” The idea is not “so intellectual that it’s confounding” and also not “the kind of wonderful fantasy that [George] Lucas” use to do.

In a world of countless remakes, re-imaginings and reboots — not all of which are bad, mind you — its refreshing and exciting to see a writer of Roth’s caliber looking to make an original space movie. It is also awesome to hear that Warner Bros. is already getting behind the project, one that is just a vague idea at this point. I guess when you’re Eric Roth, you can pull that off.

What is your favorite space movie of the past 5 years?