Did you have Enemy Mine on your Movies That Must Be About to Get Remade bingo card? I certainly didn’t. The future-set 1985 film—which was directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot)—starred Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. as a human and an alien forced to deal with their long-standing prejudices against one another.
The original Enemy Mine was based on the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella by Barry B. Longyear. The story follows human fighter pilot Willis Davidge (Quaid, in the film) and Drac fighter pilot Jeriba Shigan (Gossett), who get into a space dogfight and crash onto an alien planet, where they slowly learn to coexist—after insulting each other’s philosophers and pop culture idols.
Roger Ebert was underwhelmed by the ’80s adaptation, asking a question familiar to many a science fiction fan: Why couldn’t the aliens be more alien? “It doesn’t dare enough,” he wrote.
How daring the new version might be remains to be seen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Star Trek: Picard’s Terry Matalas is on board to write the new adaptation, but it doesn’t yet have a director or stars. Matalas seems pretty busy—he did just get tapped to run Marvel’s new Vision series—but with Star Trek: Legacy looking less and less likely, maybe he’s got some room on his plate.
