Deadline is reporting that director Dean Isrealite is in talks to helm their WarGames reboot. The article says that the studio is courting the South Africa-born filmmaker to get the long-in-development project in front of cameras.

Israelite would join Grace of Monaco writer Arash Amel in getting a new WarGames off the ground. Of the two, Amel is the more known commodity, with the Nicole Kidman-starring Grace getting picked up by the Weinstein Company, and his script for Seducing Ingrid Bergman currently in development. Those are two fairly drama-heavy, very serious works – could that point toward the tone for another round of WarGames?

Meanwhile, Israelite completed the teen-starring sci-fi thriller Project Almanac for Paramount. That film – about a group of teens whose accidental discovery of plans for a time machine go awry – will be out in early 2015.

We’re 30 years past the release of the original WarGames, which starred Matthew Broderick as a teen hacker who accidentally triggers a top-secret military computer into beginning the planning phases of World War III. The film was succeeded by a little-seen direct-to-DVD sequel, 2088’s WarGames: Dead Code, which saw another young hacker confused for a terrorist attempting to kick off World War III.

Wedged between those films were three games: a 1984 Coleco Missile Command clone, followed by a 1998 direct sequel to the film, set 20 years after its events and involving killer machines attempting to wipe out humanity. WarGames director John Badham consulted on the story.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that WarGames never really went away. The concept of some too-clever kid accidentally kicking off thermonuclear war is still a sellable concept, but MGM’s track record for reboots and remakes (Carrie, Robocop) hasn’t been the best.

[Source: Deadline]