Ever since making his feature directorial debut on Keanu Reeves’ cult classic DC Comics adaptation Constantine back in 2005, director Francis Lawrence has almost exclusively worked in the realm of effects and action-driven studio movies.
Romantic drama Water for Elephants is the sole outlier in a filmography that includes three of the four Hunger Games blockbusters, as well as in-development prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, along with Will Smith’s I Am Legend, Jennifer Lawrence’s Red Sparrow and Jason Momoa’s upcoming Netflix fantasy Slumberland.
As per Deadline, Lawrence is set to continue in that vein by helming Hollywood’s latest dive into the Philip K. Dick back catalogue. Vulcan’s Hammer is set after a cataclysmic world war, leading to the 70 nations of Earth forming the Unity Party to hand over governance to an AI named Vulcan, which uses an algorithm to dictate politics and policy.
Naturally, things go awry when Vulcan is attacked and a special agent murdered, leading to Unity director William Barris getting the call to unravel who or what is behind the plan to dismantle the system. Vulcan’s Hammer was first published in 1960, but the themes and underlying messages are just as prescient now as they were back then, so this is definitely one worth keeping an eye on.