Terry Matalas is working on a remake of Enemy Mine

Terry Matalas is the showrunner who brought us the excellent third season of Star Trek: Picard. Why on earth CBS are not going ahead with a Star Trek: Legacy show headed by Matalas is beyond me. The fans want it, but instead we are betting the Starfleet Academy!

I digress.

Matalas is writing a new version of 1985’s Enemy Mine for 20th Century Studios according to THR. You can read our review of the original film here.

The original film was directed by Wolfgang Petersen and based on Barry B. Longyear’s novella of the same name. It starred Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. as a human and alien soldier who crash on a desolate planet. They must then overcome their hatred of each other in order to survive. It was a riff on the 1968 film, Hell in the Pacific, which starred Lee Marvin and Toshirō Mifune as an American and Japanese soldier stranded on an island.

The 1985 went way over budget and flopped at the box office, but found a fan base when it hit VHS and DVD.

The novella was originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 1979. The story won the Nebula Award that year for best novella. It was followed by two sequels and eventually published as a trilogy titled The Enemy Papers.

Cue the cries of “not another remake,” and “there is nothing original anymore.”

To be honest, while I do love the original film, I would happily watch a new version. It is a classic tale of different people coming together to survive and there is plenty of scope to retell that story. Get a couple of good actors along with a good script and it has the potential to be something great.

Matalas has shown he has a good grasp of sci-fi and a love for the genre, so that is a good base for the film.

Who would you like to see star in a new version of Enemy Mine?