If you ever thought that Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME, the classic 1986 coming-of-age drama starring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell, would have been better had it been set on the Moon, then a new project from Shawn Levy may be just what the doctor ordered.
Variety reports that Twentieth Century Fox has bought CRATER, a sci-fi spec script by John J. Griffin, and is currently in talks with Shawn Levy to direct the film. Described as a coming-of-age film in the vein of STAND BY ME, the story is set on a lunar mining colony and follows a young boy who, after the death of his father, takes a trip to a mysterious crater with his four best friends prior to being permanently relocated to another planet. If they're truly going the STAND BY ME route, there'd better be a dead alien body in that crater. Or perhaps a mysterious alien egg, but that might take things in a very different direction.
CRATER won't be the only project which Shawn Levy has in the works, as he's also set to direct UNCHARTED based on the video-game franchise of the same name. Tom Holland (SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING) will star as Nathan Drake in what will be a prequel showing how the young thief grew into the famed treasure-hunter. Levy is also working on a remake of John Carpenter's STARMAN, the sci-fi romance which starred Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen. The 1984 film found an extraterrestrial-being (Bridges) paying a visit to Earth after hearing the invitation found on the Voyager 2 space-probe. Naturally, his space-craft is shot down and he's forced to craft a human body for himself, which turns out to be the recently deceased husband of Jenny Hayden (Allen). With "Starman" set to rendezvous with his people in three days time, he forces the widow to accompany him across the country, all while being chased by U.S. government agents. Stranger Things, on which Levy serves as executive-producer and occasional director, also recently debuted its second season on Netflix. Busy man.