Amidst the ongoing trend of Hollywood remaking and rebooting fan-favorite franchises, the star of the first Starship Troopers film, Casper Van Dien, thinks now is as good a time as any to send the troops of the United Citizen Federation on a new TV-specific deployment.
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Van Dien, who played Pvt. Johnny Rico in the 1997 film, spoke to his vision for a long-form Starship Troopers TV series during an interview with ComicBook.com.
Asked if he was aware of the recent circulation of a fan petition calling for Hollywood “to bring a new Starship Troopers movie to life”, the actor confirmed that not only did he know of its existence, but that he had also “been putting it out on my streams, to get Sony’s attention and make the Starship Troopers movie or TV series.”
“I think it would be great for a series,” he added. “The whole thing would work. The visual effects today would be a huge win for Sony. With the movie, I think there’s somethings they have to do with Disney too, but with the series, I think they could do it all themselves. Why wouldn’t you make this? It’d be great, and you do have Rico wanting to do it…”
Ultimately,Van Dien concluded, “It’s a thing. I mean, they had the Halo series, they’ve had different series that they’ve gone with – this is a no-brainer to me. I mean, literally, I can’t go anywhere without people yelling quotes at me.”
In light of Van Dien’s enthusiasm, one has to ask: Could Starship Troopers see a streaming rival?
Well, that’s a good question.
Working against this idea is the fact that thanks to director Paul Verhoeven’s decision to turn Robert Heinlen’s military novel into a biting satire of such concepts as propaganda and societal control, the film has a divided reputation among audiences, with some believing it to be a straight-forward war tale, some unsure of what to make of the subversion, and fans of the source material dismayed by the sheer amount of liberties taken with the original story.
Adding to this lack of a consensus is the fact that Verhoeven was unfamiliar with the property he was attempting to subvert, with the actor telling Empire in 2012 that he never finished reading Heinlen’s book because he found it “boring and depressing”.
As a result, when Starship Troopers first released, it absolutely struggled at the box office, in the end barely earning only $121 million against a $100 million budget.
With audiences still divided to this day, there’s a chance that any TV adaptation could suffer the same, indifferent fate.
That said, there is an upside to revisiting Starship Troopers in the here and now. namely the fact that the very concepts Verhoeven set out to satirize are still particularly poignant today.
As noted by Van Dien, he film’s commentary on political structures and the nature of war is just as relevant now—if not more so—than it was nearly three decades ago, especially considering the shift in the United States’ attitude away from foreign inverention over the last two decades.
So, let’s say that a streaming service does green-light a new Starship Troopers TV series. What could we possibly see?
Well for one, the project could delve further into humanity’s war with the alien Arachnids, the inner-workings of the Federation’s unique republican-style government, or even explore the effects of the war in the outer colonies.
Further, the long-form nature of TV would allow more time for the series to expand on the themes that the original film only scratched the surface of.
Over time, audiences have come to reassess Starship Troopers, in doing so recognizing it as the clever critique of militaristic propaganda that it is and allowing it to influence their own creative works (most recently the highly successful Helldivers franchise, whose entire identity is not-so-subtly based on the film).
Take this appreciation and combine it with Van Dien’s interest, and it’s genuinely possibly that streaming platforms – who are always in search of new content – could soon find themselves going to war with the Bugs.