Screenwriter Scott Silver talks about his Biblical SAMSON Superhero Movie

In January of last year it was reported that Scott Silver the screenwriter of The Fighter and 8 Mile was going to write a futurist script based on the biblical story of Samson and Delilah for Warner Bros. Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) was set to direct the film. In a recent interview with NBC Silver gave a little update saying,

I’m finishing up something completely different [than The Fighter], a superhero movie set in the future for Warner Brothers. It’s an original superhero.

Samson gives a futuristic twist to the story of the biblical strongman who was invincible until he was betrayed by Delilah, to whom he entrusted the secret that his strength came from his long hair. He went on to say,

At some point when [The Fighter] fell apart – we had Brad Pitt attached and we couldn’t get it made – I was like, ‘I literally have the cliché of having a script that can’t get made with Brad Pitt. I have to do something that people want to get made.’ So this producer Erwin Stoff and Francis Lawrence and I came up with a superhero based sort of on Samson set in the future. It’s an original superhero and we were fortunate enough to sell it to Warner Brothers. I’ve been dealing with sci-fi shit and superhero stuff, which is all new to me.

I love comic books and in some ways, because studios are making less dramas, there are a lot of dramatic elements and themes that you can get away with in a superhero movie, like Chris Nolan did in ‘Batman’, that you couldn’t get away with in any other movie. You can do dramatic stuff if it’s dealing with all superhero stuff, and that’s what I wanted to try to do.

This could be a fun movie, but I'm not so sure what's so original about it. After all, it's based on a bible story. If anyone wants to get a big film deal with Hollywood all you got to do is take a Bible story, set it in a futuristic backdrop, and throw the term "Superhero" into the mix.