With a Six Billion Dollar Man movie having long been in development, now comes word on a major step forward for the project.

Courtesy of Variety, Warner Bros. has brought in Travis Knight to take on directing duties for the effort. Genre fans will be well aware of Knight thanks to him having helmed fantastic genre efforts such as Kubo and the Two Strings and this year’s Bumblebee.

This is a feature, of course, that has been in some stage of development as far back as 2014. Back then, we saw Mark Wahlberg sign on to headline the picture as Steve Austin.

Not to be confused with the beer-drinking, finger-waving, stunner-giving wrestler, The Six Million Dollar Man’s Steve Austin is a former astronaut who ends up badly injured after a plane crash. Saved by doctors, Austin is fitted with bionic legs, a bionic right arm and a bionic eye. With these new bionic-based skills, he winds up working as an agent for the Office of Scientific Intelligence.

It was way back in 1973 that Lee Majors headlined the much-loved Six Million Dollar Man TV series as Austin; that show running for five seasons and eventually getting a spin-off in the form of The Bionic Woman. When the big-screen new take on this old favourite reared its head in 2014, however, there was the realisation that $1 million wasn’t quite as gigantic a figure as it was back in the ‘70s. Hence why this new feature is titled The Six Billion Dollar Man.

To elaborate on just why this film has been spinning its wheels for five years now, that is down to several key factors. The ever-familiar “creative differences” is certainly one element, but an even bigger factor was the collapse of The Weinstein Company, who had initial rights on the property. Since then, Warner Bros. swooped in to pick up those rights and have had Bill DuBuque penning a new screenplay for the movie.

As ever, expect more on The Six Billion Dollar Man as we get it.