Steven Spielberg to Follow up WAR HORSE with ROBOPOCALYPSE

Back in March, the sci-fi action film Robopocalypse became one of the many films added to the list of potential directing projects for Steven Spielberg.  In May, Spielberg selected the drama War Horse as his new film and filming is currently underway for a December 2011 release.  But Spielberg hasn’t left Robopocalypse behind as Deadline reports that the film will be his follow-up to War Horse.  Spielberg plans to shoot Robopocalypse in January 2012 and release it through Disney’s Touchstone Pictures in 2013.

Robopocalypse is based on an upcoming novel by Daniel H. Wilson, who previously penned How to Survive a Robot Uprising.  Although Wilson was still in the middle of writing Robopocalypse back in March, Spielberg was impressed enough by the material that he was having storyboards done while pages from the novel were being translated into a screenplay by Drew Goddard (Cloverfield).  Wilson’s novel is due to hit shelves in June 2011.

Hit the jump for a refresher on all of the projects that will continue to sit on the backburner while Spielberg plans robot doom.

Most notable among Spielberg’s long-in-development potential directing project is his Abraham Lincoln biopic, Lincoln.  That project has been in the hopper for so long that Liam Neeson, who was attached to play the 16th President, left the movie because he didn’t think it was going anywhere.

Spielberg has also been linked to Interstellar written by Jonathan Nolan, a biopic on George Gershwin, and adaptations Flowers for Algernon, The 39 Clues, and Pirates Latitude.  He was recently rumored to be considering a film based on the Bee Gees.  If you want to play the prediction game on what Spielberg will do after Robopocalypse, his filmography has a pattern of switching between blockbuster commercial fare and heavy drama.  Maybe Lincoln will finally get his chance to shine in 2013.