Robert Zemeckis to direct time travel thriller REPLAY?

Robert Zemeckis is close to a deal with Warner Bros. to direct the thriller Replay. What is cool about this news is that Zemeckis headed back to familiar territory - time travel.  As you know, he directed all three of the Back to the Future films. The project is based on the bestselling 1987 novel by Ken Grimwood, about a man who travels through time.

Replay tells the story of "a 40-something radio journalist dies of a heart attack in 1988, but re-awakens back in 1963, in his 18-year-old body, with the memories and accrued wisdom of the previous 25 years intact. He always dies in 1988, and then goes back to the late sixties, but each time he has the ability to make a new sets of choices, resulting in different spouses, progeny, and jobs in each “life. In the thriller the "main character slowly learns he can’t prevent his own death, but sets about trying to prevent the death of his daughter."

What makes this story even more ironic is that in one of the "replay's", the character notices a movie that's been directed by none other than Steven Spielberg (producer of Back to the Future). The fictional Spielberg movie in Replay ends up "leading the protagonist to his soul mate, a fellow time-jumper, and the movie's screenwriter."

The script is from screenwriter and TV producer Jason Smilovic. He wrote Lucky Number Slevin and executive produced the failed series, My Own Worst Enemy starring Christian Slater at NBC. The script has been drifting aimlessly around Hollywood almost from the moment it was published. United Artists first bought the rights from Grimwood in the late eighties. He saw the project move to Disney (before he died in 2000), and it was recently under consideration for Ben Affleck to direct. That fell apart for Affleck to direct the film about the Iranian hostage situation.

We recently reported that Zemeckis would next be directing Flight at Paramount, a drama that has Denzel Washington set to star. Washington has not officially committed to star in the film, leaving Zemeckis open to possibly direct Replay before taking on Flight.