When rumours of potential directors for Star Wars Episode VII first began to swirl around the internet, a surpise candidate among the usual Hollywood A-listers was that of Colin Trevorrow, the man behind the indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. However, Trevorrow subsequently denied that he was attached to the next instalment of the Star Wars saga, although he did reveal that he had signed on to tackle “another film will all love”, and now the identity of that project has been revealed, with Variety reporting that Trevorrow has signed on to tackle Disney’s reboot of the 1986 family sci-fi adventure Flight of the Navigator.
According to Variety, Trevorrow and Safety Not Guaranteed scribe Derek Connolly have been hired to rewrite a screenplay from Brad Copeland (Arrested Development). The original Flight of the Navigator was directed by Randall Kleiser and starred Joey Cramer as a young boy who goes missing an reappars eight years later without having aged a day, leading to an adventure on board an alien spacecraft piloted by an artificial intelligence called Max (voiced by Paul Reubens).
“Flight of the Navigator wasn’t a seminal movie of my childhood but I remember liking it and the original meant a lot to Colin as a kid, so it’s really his baby,” said Connolly, whose script for Safety Not Guaranteed saw him receive the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance. “It’ll be good to have some balance so it’s not two fanboys writing the movie.”
Originally published November 28, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
