Disney to remake ‘Flight of the Navigator’

New writer-director team also developing United Nations alien contact movie

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

Disney’s 1986 alien abduction fantasy Flight of the Navigator has been placed on ‘remake row’, with an updating of the movie now in active development at the House of Mouse.

The original movie was directed by Randal Kleiser (Grease), and followed a 12 year-old boy who mysteriously vanishes while walking in the woods one evening only to reappear eight years later having not aged a day. Meanwhile, an alien spacecraft is discovered nearby, which NASA scientists believe may explain the boy's disappearance.

A remake has been on the cards since 2009, when Brad Copeland (Arrested Development) was hired to pen the first script draft. Now, Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow have been hired to rework the new script, which the latter is set to direct.

Connolly told Variety:

"'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. It'll be good to have some balance so it's not two fanboys writing the movie."

 

Connolly and Trevorrow are perhaps best known as the writer and director (in that order) of Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival, where it also won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.

Flight of the Navigator – though not an overwhelming success at the time of its 1986 release – has since become something of a classic to the generation who grew up watching it on TV and who couldn’t help but rent the VHS every single time they saw its AWESOME poster artwork staring at them in the video store...

Let’s hope Disney doesn't cock this up.

Perhaps more intriguing than the Flight of the Navigator remake is another in-development movie by Connolly and Trevorrow (which again Trevorrow is slated to direct). The movie – originally titled ‘Intelligent Life’ – has now been renamed The Ambassador. It is set in the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, which monitors the skies for signs of extraterrestrial life and will serve as the first line of communication if alien life is ever encountered.

The plot follows “a shy and unassuming office worker accidentally making first contact with a beautiful woman who he must protect from dangers on Earth and beyond."