TheBoost said:

Given it's significance, I've always wondered that RUR has never been adapted (except I think a BBC TV show in the 50s, could be wrong).

Of course, it has lots of wierd, dated, and very Czech things in it, like all the men proposing to the same chick and stuff, but it's still a very chilling tale.

Although anything that ends with...

90 YEAR OLD SPOILER ALERT

I think it does have old adaption, yes. But given the popularity of its theme over the last several years, this is really the perfect time to go back to the root of the whole technology takes over thing. The play did it perfectly and in a very chilling way.

An adaption that follows the basic storyline, omitting the cultural idiosyncrasies, and padding out the story to show more of the Robot war, would make a movie at least as good as the crap bollocks busters that are pumped out each year.

If I were doing it, I'd stick with the island robot factory and follow the story of the characters there, make the love story a little more real instead of forced, etc. But I'd also parallel their story with at least one other set of characters living on the mainland who get to experience the robots from beginning to end.

For example, maybe follow the story of a character who starts off as a small child at the beginning of the film. He marvels as his dad brings home a shiny new robot to do the housework; by the end of the story he'd have joined the army to fight the uprising. This character's story would be inter-cut between the story of the characters n the island. This would pad things out and provide or proxy to see the uprising unfold first hand. In the original play the only way the characters living at the island robot factory (and in turn the audience) get to hear about the uprising are through newspapers.

Oh man! Rossum's Universal Robots just sounds like a big ticket seller by the title alone. Can't wait for this movie! Maybe I'll get to watch it around the same time I get to play my version of Bioshock 3.