X-Men director signs on for new adaptation of sci-fi classic by Robert Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers

Bryan Singer is to adapt Robert Heinlein’s classic right-wing libertarian science-fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the big screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The X-Men director will work with 20th Century Fox, which produces the long-running mutant superhero saga, on the project.

Heinlein’s 1966 Nebula award-winning book has been called one of the three or four most influential libertarian novels of the last century. It centres on a lunar colony with old west overtones which decides to fight for independence from Earth with the help of its protector, a newly-sentient supercomputer named Mike.

Hollywood has attempted to bring the story to the big screen twice before, most recently via Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, but to no avail. Singer will reportedly work from a screenplay by Green Lantern’s Marc Guggenheim on the new version.

Heinlein is known as one of the “big three” science-fiction writers of the 20th century, along with Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov, but has suffered a chequered history on the big screen. The most notable adaptation was the 1997 space romp Starship Troopers, but director Paul Verhoeven chose to subvert the original novel’s patriotic-militaristic leanings by painting a future controlled by bug-hunting fascists. Heinlein, who died in 1988 at the age of 80, would not have been amused.

Singer is currently Hollywood hot property after his return to the X-Men franchise, last year’s Days of Future Past, scored an impressive $748m worldwide at the global box office and benefited from strong reviews.

He’s set to direct the follow-up, 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, which once again stars Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy as mutants Mystique, Magneto and Professor X.