Columbia Pictures has a new Starship Troopers feature film in the works, with District 9 filmmaker Neill Blomkamp attached to write and direct the adaptation of the classic science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. Blomkamp will also produce the film with Terri Tatchell, his partner and wife who co-wrote both District 9 and Blomkamp’s 2015 film Chappie.

Per the novel’s synopsis: “The historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one “The Third Space War” (or the fourth), or whether “The First Interstellar War” fits it better. We just call it “The Bug War.” Everything up to then and still later were “incidents,” “patrols,” or “police actions.” However, you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an “incident” as you are if you buy it in a declared war…

“In one of Robert A. Heinlein’s most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe—and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind’s most alarming enemy.”

The novel was adapted in the 1997 movie adaptation from Paul Verhoeven, the director of Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct. The main character, Johnny Rico, was played by Casper Van Dien, and the cast included Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Ironside.

Upon release, Starship Troopers faced critical backlash, with reviewers interpreting the film as an endorsement of fascism and disparaging its violence and performances. Years later, however, the film has been re-evaluated as a cult classic and praised as a prescient satire of fascism and authoritarian governance.

Neill Blomkamp’s take will not be a remake of the Verhoeven film, and will instead aim to return to the source material.