Here’s an idea. Take all of classic novels, and try to make them feel relevant by setting them in space. Like the Dickens classic A Tale of Two Planets. Or Mitchell’s Gone with the Meteor Shower. Or Uncle Tom’s Cockpit. As silly as this sounds, it seems as if one idea ias actually gaining tracition: Moby Dick…. IN SPACCCEEEEE.

The good news is that one of the most interesting directors around is behind it. In an interview with Radio 5 in the UK, Lynne Ramsay announced that she is indeed working on the Moby Dick in space idea. Ramsay was behind indie darlings like Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar. Most recently she made We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won Best Film at the London Film Festival and also happens to be the best film so far this year. It hits the US in December.

So will it work? Well, the classic novels has already been set in space on several occasions. There was a comic book story in 1965, A Ray Bradbury novel (Leviathan ’99) in 2007, and of course Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, in which Khan played the Ahab role (even quoting directly from the book). Indeed, unlike most other classic novels, the isolated nature of the story (a ship in sea, hunting a single entity) makes it more possible for a transition to outer space, even if the prospect does conjure up all sorts of camp imagery.