After contracting coronavirus during his visit to Australia earlier this year, Tom Hanks reported from the quarantine that he and his wife Rita Wilson are feeling better. He traveled to Australia to start filming an Elvis Presley biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann, meaning that his work on BIOS is presumably complete. However, since the pandemic started all release dates became questionable, especially for big movies.
What can I say, I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic movies, especially if they involve a small cast and a dog. Bios is a science fiction movie set in a dystopian future where almost all of mankind has vanished. We find our protagonist, Finch, as the last man on Earth, contemplating what will become of this rock after his death. The details of the story are not yet clear, but apparently, Finch has to travel across the country (a huge surprise) in search of something joined by his dog and a robot that he created. During this road trip, he must teach the robot to care for the dog after he’s gone and this is about everything we know about the story.
Now, all this sounds a bit tedious and boring, especially after so many movies that used the same story with slight variations, but there’s a reason for optimism. Starring Tom motherfucking Hanks, BIOS could be that science fiction movie that we were waiting for. After A Boy and His Dog (1975) starring Don Johnson, I Am Legend (2007) starring Will Smith, The Road (2009) starring Viggo Mortensen and many other movies that explored the similar situations like The Book of Eli or The Rover, I am really excited to see just how much the BIOS will be different from them. And have you ever seen Tom Hanks pick a bad movie? The man already mastered the whole loneliness think with Castaway, one of my favorite movies and there’s no reason to think that he won’t be great here.
And since Finch is actually a scientist that can create robots and presumably AI, we have a nice side-plot that could actually be one of the key features of the movie. After all, it is called BIOS. Now, bios is short for basic input/output system, a piece of code that boots up immediately after you turn on any electronic device that has it. It is the basis on which everything else is then loaded and executed. So, we could be looking at something that’s emerged in recent years as a pretty hot topic: interaction between humans and AI. And when you consider the fact that sentient robots will actually outlive Finch, BIOS is starting to sound more like a moral contemplation of the future of humanity, without humans there to witness it. Or I have been watching Joe Rogan too much…
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik (Repo Men), best known for his work on two high profile television shows Game of Thrones and Altered Carbon, we can already expect that the movie will look and feel great. After all, the guy directed “Battle of the Bastards” and “Hardhome. The script was written by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell, with Ivor’s credentials looking pretty sweet. He was the associate producer on both the original Alien and Blade Runner and although this is his first foray into writing, I think we have nothing to fear here. Finally, the whole shebang is being produced by Robert Zemeckis and Amblin, completing the list of heavy hitters involved in this movie.
BIOS is set to premiere on August 13, 2021, although I somehow doubt that they will make that date. I don’t know why, but I just think that the release date will be pushed a couple of months. Until then, you can check out some of the above-mentioned post-apocalyptic movies and hope that we will have the opportunity to check out this one before 2022.