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Aliens come to Earth. Aliens leave Earth. Humans fight over the artifacts the
aliens left behind. This is the plot outline for the next David Jacobson
feature, Roadside Picnic. The
writer/director behind Dahmer (yes, the serial killer film actually took home a trio of IFP Independent Spirit Awards back in 2003) and the urban cowboy flick Down in
the Valley will take on the adaptation of the 1972 novel by Russian
sci-fi authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. An allegory for the Chernobyl
disaster, Roadside Picnic tells a deeper story of the human desire to
control the unknown.
Roadside Picnic sees the principle character Red Schuhart as a stalker, one of those strange misfits compelled to venture illegally into the Zone and collect the strange artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered there. His whole life, even the nature of his daughter, is determined by the Zone.
Produced by super-busy Neil Moritz for Columbia Pictures, Roadside Picnic will be both written and directed by Jacobson. Perhaps Will Smith will be cast
making this his fifth film involving extraterrestrials.