JJ Abrams Bringing “Boilerplate” to Big Screen

With the preparations for "Super 8" not keeping him sufficiently busy, JJ Abrams' will be producing a new comic book adaptation about the very first robot, one that fought alongside the likes of Teddy Roosevelt.

Abrams' Bad Robot productions will be bringing “Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel” to the silver screen, according to Heat Vision. The "graphic novel-picture book hybrid," (whatever that means) by the husband -and-wife team of Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, is described thusly:

Meet Boilerplate, the world’s first robot soldier—not in a present-day military lab or a science-fiction movie, but in the past, during one of the most fascinating periods of U.S. history. Designed by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893 as a prototype, for the self-proclaimed purpose of “preventing the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations,” Boilerplate charged into combat alongside such notables as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia. Campion and his robot also circled the planet with the U.S. Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla.

Guinan first pitched the story 11 years ago via a website, one that eventually developed a following of its own. He even went as far as producing a faux trailer (embedded in this story) for the movie. The book was finally published last year.

Who knows when this will be ready, but we're digging it.

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