I just saw some news via SFSignal and SciFi Squad about plans to create and animated version of Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog, with a tentative 2012 ETA. As a fan of the Hugo-winning 1975 film with Don Johnson (yes really, Don Johnson) and the original Nebula-winning Ellison novella, I think this could be a terrific project. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it’s a post-apocalyptic tale featuring a misogynist young man and his super-intelligent telepathic dog, with a skewed, satirical edge that one expects from the best Ellison.

It isn’t really clear if the film, to be helmed by David Lee Miller, is taking the original 1975 script as its starting point, or planning a fresh adaptation of the Ellison novella. Either way my rule of thumb has always been that the more post-apocalyptic films, and the more movies based on works of the giants of the field, the better off we as a society are. Plus it just looks cool.