Steven Spielberg takes on 'Pirate Latitudes'

Project based on Michael Crichton's final novel

By Jay A. Fernandez

It's a 7-year-old boy's dream team -- Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton and David Koepp moving on from rampaging dinosaurs to marauding pirates.

DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film rights to the action-adventure novel "Pirate Latitudes," which Crichton wrote just before his death in November. Spielberg, who directed Koepp's adaptations of Crichton's "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World," will produce the film and possibly direct.

Koepp has signed on to adapt.

"Michael was a scrupulous researcher and one of the most innovative writers of our era," said Koepp. "To have gotten to work with one of his novels was a privilege; to work with three seems like a dream."

"Latitudes," which takes place in 1665, is about a daring plan to infiltrate Port Royal, one of the world's richest and most notorious cities, and raid a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. HarperCollins will publish the novel, which Crichton's assistant found in a completed manuscript after his death, on November 24.

Crichton and Spielberg also collaborated on the long-running medical drama "ER," which they launched together in 1994.

"Michael Crichton was one of our greatest storytellers who expanded all of our imaginations with his books, films, and television," said Spielberg. "With the 'ER' series and 'Jurassic Park' series, I enjoyed one of the best collaborations of my career. Now with 'Pirate Latitudes,' I and all of us at DreamWorks have the chance to be excited about bringing this new Michael Crichton work to the screen."

CAA brokered the deal on behalf of the Crichton estate in conjunction with literary agency Janklow & Nesbit.

A Harvard medical school graduate, Crichton published deeply researched novels, typically about technology run amok, for 40 years. A dozen of his books were adapted into films, and he also wrote and/or directed original screenplays, including "Twister," "Runaway," "Looker" and "Westworld."

The CAA-repped Koepp also worked on the screenplays for Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." He additionally wrote and directed "Ghost Town" for DreamWorks last year.

Spielberg, also repped by CAA, is finishing up "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn" for Paramount and Sony before moving on to his remake of "Harvey" for DreamWorks and Fox.

The Top 5 “Crazy” Michael Crichton Ideas That Actually Came True

Given the recent death of best-selling author and sci-fi pioneer Michael Crichton, we thought it was the perfect time to reflect on some of his most innovative and fascinating ideas…that just happened to have come true.

5. Talking Gorillas: Congo (1980) was more than just another notch into the decent-book-cum-awful-movie belt. It also highlighted what was once a novel concept: that apes could use human language to communicate. Cute little Amy, with her sign language glove (which appeared in the movie but not the book), was loosely based on Koko the gorilla, whose actual linguistic abilities continue to be debated.

Since then, there’s been Kanzi, a bonobo who “apparently has learned more than 3,000 spoken English words and can produce (by means of lexigrams) novel English sentences and comprehend English sentences he has never heard before.” Granted, those who doubted before remain unconvinced.

4. Self-Replicating Robots: In Prey (2002), Crichton created a world of self-replicating nanorobots with rudimentary intelligence and predatory instincts, who spend several hundred pages running amok and causing all sorts of mayhem.

Today, researchers have developed robots that can physically self assemble, and even produce copies of themselves. Granted, getting to that next stage—manufacturing more of themselves from raw materials—is substantially harder.

3. Superbugs from Space: Crichton’s debut novel, The Andromeda Strain (1969), terrified readers with the ultimate biohazard: a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that infects human blood and mutates like wildfire to defy containment.

Lucky for us, the chances of the next pandemic hurling in from space are slim to none. But the book brought the concept of bio-safety levels to far more advanced heights. As for the next great bug, not only have we created antibiotic-resistant superbugs here on Earth, we’ve also discovered that some strains become more virulent when sent into space. (Though fear not: They become far less deadly once they’ve made the journey home.)

2. Brain Implants: Crichton’s 1972 thriller The Terminal Man was far ahead of its time. The hero, suffering from “thought seizures” after a car accident, undergoes a procedure in which electrodes are implanted in his brain. Unfortunately, since the electrodes also stimulate his pleasure center, the implant winds up doing far more harm than good.

Today, electrode-studded swim caps let people control robots using only their thoughts, and brain implants are not only real but can be used to help deaf people hear and blind people see—and may be the future of treatment for depression and other mental disorders.

1. Cloning Dead (Or Even Extinct) Animals: First prize goes to the eponymous Jurassic Park (1990), in which science-minded billionaire John Hammond concocts a scheme to clone dinosaurs using DNA extracted from prehistoric mosquitoes. The dinos are created/hatched, the park is opened, and the inevitable happens. Dinner, anyone?

Skip forward to today, where scientists have successfully cloned mice that have been dead and frozen for 16 years. There’s even talk of cloning long-extinct woolly mammoths. And let’s not forget cryogenically frozen humans (Ted Williams, we hardly knew ye).

Image: Screenshot from A&E’s television version of The Andromeda Strain.

6 incredible technologies from Michael Crichton stories

Prolific author Michael Crichton died this week. He practically invented the techno-thriller genre — scientifically complex stories tempered with strongly human characters (his last novel will be posthumously published next year). Our sister site SCI FI Wire has a good summary of his best and worst works here, and it reminded us of the prominent role that technology played in Crichton's stories.

From Jurassic Park to Disclosure to The Andromeda Strain, Crichton always laced his stories with tech that was beyond the cutting edge. After the Continue jump, join us for a look at five amazing technologies from Crichton's stories that we'll never forget.

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1. The Robot Gunslinger
As seen in: Westworld, filmed in 1973
We'll always remember: Written and directed by Crichton himself, Westworld features a steely-eyed Yul Brynner as the robotic gunslinger. He's an entertainer at an amusement park with androids for actors, and — as usual when robots congregate — the 'bots rebel. I don't want to ruin anything, but let's just say corrosive fluids to the face aren't always a sure-fire way to keep an android down.

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2. Dinosaur Cloning
As seen in: Jurassic Park, published in 1987
Adapted to film: 1993
We'll always remember: "Welcome to Jurassic Park." Crichton's dino-filled theme park wowed audiences so much that it spurned him to write a sequel — something he was strongly opposed to until Spielberg nudged him a bit. And the idea of cloning extinct species from preserved DNA? Well, it may not be as far off as you think.

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3. Holographic Projectors
As seen in: Disclosure, published in 1994
Adapted to film: 1994
We'll always remember: Holograms are fun — just ask CNN. Disclosure isn't exactly a science-fiction story, but it still revolves around the dramatic going-ons at the heart of a high-tech computer company, which happens to have a lot of fun goodies like holograms.

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4. Time Travel
As seen in: Timeline, published in 1999
Adapted to film: 2003
We'll always remember: True to the Crichtonian formula, Timeline features an amusement-minded entrepreneur who drags a bunch of smart people into a dangerous situation. No dinosaurs this time. Instead, it's the Middle Ages.

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5. Nanobot Killers
As seen in: Prey, published in 2002
We'll always remember: In a cautionary tale of nanotechnology gone wrong, swarms of tiny self-replicating nanobots turn homicidal. The swarm evolves rapidly in response to threats against it and proves to be as unyielding and diabolical as any good antagonist.

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6. Gorilla-Frying Lasers
As seen in: Congo, published in 1980
Adapted to film: 1995
We'll always remember: Say what you will about Congo the movie, but it did one thing right: lasers. Okay, so the powerful laser weaponry shown in the movie is all but impossible today — let alone then — but if you're going to butcher an amazing book, you may as well dice up some angry gorillas with crazy ray beams while you're at it.