Colin Trevorrow has been chatting about his unsuccessful attempt to get a remake of Flight Of The Navigator moving.
Even before successfully relaunching the Jurassic Park series with 2015’s Jurassic World, Colin Trevorrow was being attached to all kinds of interesting projects, not least because of the success of his charming indie hit, 2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed.
The word on that project was strong enough to lead to Trevorrow finding himself attached to a remake of the 1980s sci-fi adventure film Flight Of The Navigator, a project that ultimately wouldn’t make it past the development stage with Trevorrow at the helm.
Flight Of The Navigator has been in some form of development ever since, with Neil Blomkamp suggesting that he was working on a version around 2017. That was before in 2021 it was publicly announced that the star of Trevorrow’s Jurassic World films, Bryce Dallas Howard was to helm a new version of the movie, which sees a a young boy befriending an alien spaceship and embarking on an exhilarating adventure.
Howard’s version was set to feature a girl as the protagonist rather than a boy, but we haven’t heard much in the years since to suggest that the project is still alive. However, Trevorrow has talked about the process of seeing another filmmaker take on a project that he couldn’t crack, and how having a close professional relationship with that filmmaker resulted in an interesting dynamic.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker said:
“All the time. I saw every draft that she’s been working on as she’s been looking to crack it. If you were born at a certain moment, it’s one of those ones that you have a fascination with. As a kid, the idea that all of your friends and family have aged while you’re still a kid, it’s just the absolute worst nightmare. So, yes, we’ve definitely connected on it… It’s pretty rare for directors to have other directors that they can communicate with and maybe even complain to sometimes, so she’s been wonderful in that way.”
It’s an interest snippet from an interview full of interesting thoughts, not least Trevorrow’s take in distancing himself from Star Wars following his departure from the director’s chair of 2019’s ill-fated The Rise Of Skywalker.
Flight Of The Navigator is a film that has featured previously on the FIlm Stories podcast so if you’re feeling nostalgic and want to go back to those heady 80s days when fun films about friendships with mysterious alien forces were ten a penny, step this way.
