Coming off the failed franchise-starter I Am Number Four, director D.J. Caruso is looking to take another stab at sci-fi. The director is now in final negotiations to direct the sci-fi disaster film Invertigo. The story concerns a long-lost NASA space probe under the influence of “dark energy” that mysteriously crashes on earth and proceeds to disrupt and reverse the pull of gravity. Skyscrapers and bridges are ripped from the ground and rivers “rain from the sky” as a team mounts a mission into upside-down Manhattan to avert the planet’s destruction. Hit the jump for more on this ludicrous premise.

I can handle action movies that ask the audience to take a leap of faith, but there’s a certain point at which the ridiculous becomes just absurd. If Earth’s gravitational pull was reversed and buildings were ripped from the ground, why the hell wouldn’t they float into outer space? Is there a surprise forcefield surrounding Earth’s atmosphere that catches everything in the event of a gravitational emergency? I’m assuming some plot device is introduced to explain why everything stops once it hits the sky, but I find it hard to imagine that they’ve come up with something that could be remotely considered “conceivable.”

Per Heat Vision, Sony already has a release date set for the project, March 7th, 2014, and Neal Moritz (the Fast and Furious franchise) is onboard as producer with Ehren Kruger (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) and Bradley Camp writing the script. I was a big fan of Caruso’s Disturbia but I found Eagle Eye to be lacking and I Am Number Four to be atrocious (though mainly due to story/source material issues). The guy’s got promise, and maybe he’ll turn Invertigo into a fun, successful disaster pic, but I’m gonna find it really hard to get past the scientific ramifications of the story.