You may know Richard Curtis best as the guy who brought us the romantic comedies, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. All three were mainstream, light hearted and very British.

In fact the man has predominantly written for comedy from the beginning. He is responsible for the extremely popular 80s series Blackadder, and the 90s BBC classic The Vicar of Dibley. He also wrote the screenplay for Bridget Jones’s Diary in 2001.

As the name Richard Curtis is synonymous with romantic comedies and comedy television shows it might be a surprise to hear his next project is neither romantic or comic. About Time is set to be a low budget science-fiction film.

We don’t know many details, but we do know he has penned the screenplay (of course), and this will be his third time working behind the camera as the director. His début effort was 2003′s Love Actually, which he followed up in 2009 with The Boat That Rocked,  a comedy about a pirate radio station in the North sea.

He seems equipped to take on the role, despite his predominantly comedic credits. He contributed an episode of the popular sci-fi series Doctor Who, starring current Time-Lord Matt Smith, and wrote a special time-travelling short: Blackadder: Back and Forth for the Millennium Dome.

About Time will be produced by the production company behind Curtis’ most successful films, Working Title. The producer Tim Bevan told the Hollywood Reporter that casting was in process and their aim is to shoot the film in the summer of this year.

We’ll be waiting a while for a release then. Until then you can watch his most recent writing effort, Stephen Spielberg’s Oscar tipped War Horse in cinemas across the UK now.

One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy is a novel set two millennia from the present day, and follows Heironymous Rexaphin, a boy who lives in a Moon colony long after the Earth has abandoned its ambitious goal of terraforming (giving it an atmosphere, etc) the orbiting ball of rock. So far, so sci fi.

Where it gets a little bananas is the point where we learn that Rex (c’mon, I’m not writing that name in full again, he’ll get used to it) can see a fourth primary colour. Advantages? Seeing all matter and all time. Disadvantages? A requirement to wear goggles, and the death of anyone who looks into his eyes.

Bit of a lonely-sounding life, but once he falls for an Earth-girl and has to go on the run from people who’d like to see the pair imprisoned on the dark side of the Moon, things get a little more interesting. Well, for everyone but Rex – given his powers I’m sure he’s seen every possible outcome already. God, is that a plot hole? I hope not. More on this as it comes.

While that sinks in, I’ll throw some knowledge at you. Electric City is a series set in the aforementioned metropolis, a place that seems like paradise, until a more sinister side hidden away underneath its glossy exterior is revealed.

Hanks has done writing work for the project, and stars in it as the lead voice actor. Erin McPherson, the Vice President and Head of Video Programming and Originals at Yahoo!, where the series will make its home, had the following to say:

“It is animated and it has a science fiction bent and in that way, like all great science fiction, it definitely plays on what is the best type of society to live in and themes around energy usage, conservation and sustainability.”

The plot sounds interesting, and McPherson makes it sound extremely relevant and topical (yes, I know, eco-themes again, but Tom Hanks! C’mon, that’s got to be worth something, right?), so we’ll be tuning in to check this out when it appears.

No word on a date yet, but it’ll be a total of 90 minutes long, and will be broadcast in… twenty minute segments. Clearly, someone’s maths skills are a little rusty. My prediction is that the pilot will be ten. More on this as we get the info.

If there’s one thing that can be said for animation, it’s certainly getting weirder. Sure, The Nightmare Before Christmas wasn’t your conventional children’s Christmas film, but you could argue it wasn’t even a children’s film at all. In fact, most animated films since have had a dialogue that works on two levels – for parents and for children.

In this example, we’ve got Norman, a kid who can see dead people. For kids, this is a scary and crazy idea, and for us, it’s a play on The Sixth Sense right from the start. But it’s a canny bit of world-building – the characters are a mix of kid-friendly weirdos, teenage stereotypes, and characters that will tickle the funnybones of older viewers.

The teaser trailer’s below – although the small boy Norman can see the dead, unfortunately, one day so do the rest of his town, with various amusing and creepy consequences. Enjoy!

However, it appears unlikely that latest incarnation of the Doctor, Matt Smith, will be cast in the lead role, despite his popularity with TV viewers. Yates has indicated that the film will not follow on from the current series, but will instead take a fresh approach to the Doctor Who concept.

Yates stated that “Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations, which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.” The script is yet to be written, and Yates is working alongside the head of L.A.-based BBC Worldwide, Jane Tranter, in order to find a writer. They have also stated that they are going to spend at least two years putting together this feature-length venture  in order to ‘get it right’ – hardly surprising, considering the fanatical fanbase will probably want to exterminate the team if they get it wrong.

The Doctor Who series originally ran from 1963 to 1989, before being rebooted by Russell T. Davies in 2005, with Christopher Eccleston playing the Doctor, before handing the role to David Tennant later that year.

There have previously been two ‘Dr. Who’ feature films, in 1965 and 1966. These were both based on stories from the Doctor Who series, but confusingly didn’t feature the Doctor himself, but an eccentric inventor called Dr. Who (using the abbreviated form of the title) who was played by Hammer Horror stalwart Peter Cushing. There has only been one Doctor Who feature-length production, Doctor Who: The Movie, which was a straight-to-television film starring Paul McGann as the Doctor.

Despite the fact that this will be much more of a big-budget Hollywood production, Yates and Tranter are said to be keen to retain the ‘British sensibility’, which would no doubt be essential in attracting the type of cult following which the small-screen series has always been enjoyed. The pair have also worked together previously on a number of other BBC TV series’, such as The Way We Live Now and State of Play.

We’ll keep you posted!

With Total Recall, you’re at something of an advantage. The plot is already fine, though if you remove the Nineties melodrama filter it gets even better. You can’t find a worse actor than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and considering Colin Farrell is the one playing Doug Quaid (minus the Austrian accent), you really can’t go far wrong.

Doug Quaid is your average, everyday builder. He has a job, a wife, and a comfortable home life. But he longs to explore the human colonies on Mars, and one day, he gets in touch with Rekall, a company specialising in memory implantation – holiday memories being far cheaper than an actual holiday to the Red Planet.

Things get complicated when parts of his real identity are awakened during the process of having happy holiday recollections inserted into his mind. He soon realises that he’s actually a secret agent and that his entire life was a fabrication. Escaping to Mars, he then pursues his own destiny, a bizarre combination of Quaid and his secret self.

It’s a great plot, and was based on Phillip K. Dick’s novelette ‘We’ll Remember it For You Wholesale.’ Bearing in mind other films based on his writing include Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) and A Scanner Darkly (novel of the same name), I couldn’t be happier to check this one out. More on this as it comes.

We’ve just seen the trailer, and we’ll be honest – it’s hard not to feel slightly scared. Stephen Hawking’s point that aliens may in fact try to colonise Earth in much the same way America was itself colonised is a terrifying thought, and miles away from the musical and cute climax of Encounters of the Third Kind.

This time, they’re not friendly, and certainly don’t look like they’re into communicating with the human race using a keyboard. Abduction, however, is definitely on the menu, and although brief, we can see that hundreds of people are being sucked up into one ship. Given that we can see many ships, the numbers are staggering.

This is the element of science fiction that tends to be the most, and the least popular. Utter hopelessness is something horror thrives on, and dark science fiction films like this, Cube and Cloverfield help to reinforce that. Watching the bad guys win on a huge scale, if only at first, makes for some edge of the seat watching.

The trailer’s only kicking around on Apple at the moment, but feel free to take a peek. A word of advice – after watching, really, really, don’t look up…

For those who remember the opening half-hour of Alien, Ripley and co. stumble across a large, dead-by-chest-burster alien sat in a chair in the middle of a large room. He’s massive, but dead and calcified to the point where imagining his original appearance is almost impossible However, Ridley Scott has intentions to finally answer the curiosities of many a xenomorph-movie buff, and explore who the Space Jockey is and how their race interacts with the humans, xenomorphs and the many other interesting races in Scott’s unique sci-fi universe.

During a recent Q&A, Scott stated that he was shocked no one had ever taken the bait of doing more about the Space Jockey in their own takes on the franchise. He plans to fit in enough history about the dead alien to fill two films, which should come as a wonderful bit of news to anyone hoping for more than one film. It’s feasible that after explaining the race more thoroughly, he may want to either ignore or take in the graphic novels penned by Mark Verheiden in which the Space Jockey is very much alive and kicking. Time will tell if the prequel lives up to the hype, though judging by the similar critical response to James Cameron’s return to science fiction, it may be one to watch.

Read more science fiction stories at The Film Review.

1 Get a medical condition…

Based on Audrey Niffenegger’s best-selling novel, the star of this summer’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (released 14 Aug) suffers from Chrono-Impairment – a  medical condition that propels him, unwillingly, from one point in time to another – normally at times of anxiety.
Key requirement in time travel: Stress and a medical condition.
Past of future: Both.
Rule: You can’t take anything with you into the future or past.
Flaw in science: Surely the circular nature of the main characters relationship would have had to have unfolded in real time to be able to become circular?
Conceivability: 7 out of 10

2 Invest in a flux capacitor…

Back to the Future’s Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown came up with his theory for time travel after bumping his head; after calculating the workings of a ‘flux capacitor’, he integrated it into the DeLorean – a vehicle that could travel up to 88 mph and contain 1.21 gigawatts of power, originally powered by a plutonium-based nuclear reactor (eventually replaced by a lightening rod and later still by garbage). The rest is history – or is that future?
Key requirement in time travel: A souped up Delorean.
Past or future: Both.
Rule: When you change the past the future ‘instantaneously’ changes.
Flaw: What happened to the Marty from the new future – does he have the same memories as the old one?
Conceivability: 5 out of 10

3 Read some childhood diaries…

The star of The Butterfly Effect suffers from blackouts during periods of anxiety, thus a psychologist recommends he start keeping a detailed journal of his life to help him deal with his inexplicable memory loss. Years later, when he’s turned into Ashton Kutcher, he starts rereading his journals and discovers that by doing so he can travel through time.
Key requirement in time travel: Reading.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: You can change the past, but it doesn’t always lead to the future you desired.
Flaw in science: Ashton contentiously tries to change different pasts to get just one right – surely only one attempt is necessary?
Conceivability: 2 out of 10

4 Sprinkle yourself with magic dust.

While most of us wish we were younger, the teen star of 13 Going on 30 longs to be ‘thirty, flirty and thriving’. With the help a closet, dollhouse and some magic wishing dust, she not only gets her wish but also finds herself miraculously transformed into Jennifer Garner (what more could you wish for?).
Key requirement in time travel: Magic wishing dust.
Past or future: Future.
Rule: Be careful what you wish for.
Flaw in science: A 1987 girl would never choose a 2004 wardrobe.
Conceivability: 1 out of 10.

5 Utilise the technology of the Ministry of Defence

After the Ministry of Defence learns that Dr Evil has developed a time machine, it sends the star of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me back to 1969 with its very own travel device – a pimped up and ‘groovy’ convertible Volkswagen New Beetle, obvs.
Key requirement in time travel: A Beetle with ‘Destination’ imputer.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: ‘Don’t worry about the science and just enjoy yourself’.
Flaw in science: Erm, let’s not even go there.
Conceivability: 1 out of 10.

6 Become the core of future society

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure opens in the distant future where an apostle is preparing a time machine disguised as a phone booth (aren’t they extinct already?) to travel back to 1988 and ensure that Bill and Ted pass their history paper and thus continue to make the music that will later become the centre Utopian society.
Key requirement in time travel: A phone box.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: ‘The clock in San Dimas is always running.’
Flaw in science: Disorder rules – characters meet themselves in different times and past figures appear in the present, yet the future remains intact.
Conceivability: 2 out of 10.

7 Learn to fly, like, really fast

Superman circles the Earth at such a tremendous speed that he breaks the time barrier. As time starts to go backwards, so does the Earth, which means he can travel back far enough to stop the earthquake created by Lex Luthor.
Key requirement in time travel: The ability to travel beyond the speed of time.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: The neutrons and protons in the molecules that make up mass all move in the same direction.
Flaw in science: Some say the kinetic energy to stop and reverse the earth in the time shown would boil the oceans.
Conceivability: 3 out of 10.

8 Leave it to the cyborgs

A cyborg called The Terminator is sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to destroy humanity by killing the future mother of its future saviour. Only living tissue or an object covered with such living tissue can be sent through time, preventing the Terminator from bringing any advanced weaponry.
Key requirement in time travel: An egg-shaped bubble.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: It’s an ontological paradox
Flaw in the science: Why not just send back all kinds of Terminators to 1800 and have them take over then?
Conceivability: 5 out of 10.

9 Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes’ Charlton Heston goes on a mission to space in the late 20th century. Travelling faster than the speed of light means that the craft has journeyed 320 light years from Earth in just 18 months. However, due to relativistic time dilation, around 2,031 years have passed by back home – where they find that apes have taken over.
Key requirement in time travel: A space ship and electromagnetic storm.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: There’s no rule – the medium that caused time travel is not defined so there’s no pattern.
Flaw in the science: Radical breakthroughs in physics are required before we can propel large ships at meaningful fractions of the speed of light.
Conceivability: 6 out of 10.

10 Create a black hole

In the year 2387, the galaxy is threatened by a volatile supernova, which Star Trek’s Spock plans to destroy by creating an artificial black hole. Before the mission is completed, however, the supernova destroys a planet and the space ship gets caught in the black hole’s event horizon before being propelled into the past.
Key requirement in time travel: A space ship and black hole.
Past or future: Past.
Rule: If you travel back in time and change something, you don’t alter the future but break off a completely alternate reality.
Flaw in the science: How can Old Spock still exist in the past after it has been altered?
Conceivability: 7 out of 10.

*Unlike the studios, I’m no scientist so won’t be held responsible for any inaccuracies.

Meanwhile the booby prize when to 2000′s Battlefield Earth – the unprecedented John Travolta flop which battled the box office and lost…

Top five best sci-fi films:

1. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
2. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
3. Aliens
4. The Matrix
5. Blade Runner