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Anne Hathaway takes on Robopocalypse

The Dark Knight Rises actor confirms involvement in Spielberg adaptation of Daniel H Wilson’s artificial intelligence adventure

Guardian News & Media Ltd
Published: 12:11 November 14, 2012

Image Credit: AFP
Anne Hathaway

Anne Hathaway will have a leading role in the planned Steven Spielberg action movie Robopocalypse, the actor has told Empire.

The Dark Knight Rises star will take an unspecified part in the adaptation of the bestselling 2011 science fiction novel by Daniel H Wilson. The storyline centres on a near future where domestic robots are commonplace and artificial intelligence is about to become a reality. When Archos, a supremely intelligent AI, achieves self-awareness, he sets about destroying human civilisation in order to preserve Earth’s biodiversity.

“If Robopocalypse happens I will be in it,” Hathaway told Empire, “and I believe it’s quite real, though you never want to hang your hat on anything.”

She added: “Whenever I’m taking time off, I always joke to my team that I’m on vacation unless Steven Spielberg calls. And I was on vacation and Spielberg called. So I was like, ‘OK, put my money where my mouth is.’”

Wilson’s writing has been compared to that of Michael Crichton, the writer of Jurassic Park. Spielberg adapted that novel into what was in 1993 the highest-grossing film of all time. Dreamworks acquired the rights to Robopocalypse in 2009, two years prior to the book’s publication. The film adaptation is set to shoot in Montreal, Canada, from a screenplay by Cabin in the Woods’ Drew Goddard. It is due for release in April 2014, with Ben Whishaw and Chris Hemsworth also tipped to star.

Despite insisting that the new Star Wars film was “not his genre”, Spielberg has been a prominent director of science fiction from 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind onwards. His most recent futuristic forays include 2001 Stanley Kubrick collaboration A.I., 2002’s critically acclaimed Philip K Dick adaption Minority Report and the 2005 alien invasion epic War of the Worlds, based on HG Wells’ famous yarn.