For years, there have been rumors that a sequel to the 1984 science-fiction adventure The Last Starfighter was in the works. Now it seems that it might actually be happening.
According to a source for Cinema Blend, the project is not only happening, it goes in front of the cameras later this month. The scooper goes on to say that “it involves original director Nick Castle, writer Jonathan Betuel and actor Lance Guest. It’s your basic Son of the Starfighter storyline and actually sounds pretty cool.”
The film, titled merely Starfighter, is currently on the production schedule of George Paige and Associates, so it is at least in some form of development, though there has been no official announcement that the film is a go.
The Last Starfighter was basically Star Wars filtered through the current burgeoning craze in coin-operated video games- a teenage boy (Guest) is recruited to fight in an interstellar war based on his expertise at a video game. Despite the film’s derivative plot, it still manages to succeed based on the performances of Guest and costars Robert Preston, playing an interstellar version of his famed Music Man role of Harold Hill and Dan O’Herlihy as Guest’s alien co-pilot.
The original Starfighter is also remembered for the fact that it was the first film to have all its visual effects, with the exception of explosions, done through CGI. While it is common place today, using a computer for visual effects was relatively a new idea and in this instance augmented the film’s video game theme. Starfighter‘s effects were realized on a Cray X-MP supercomputer, though they could be easily be recreated on a modern laptop.
