A while back, Steven Spielberg was interested in directing an adaptation of the unfinished science fiction novel from author Daniel H. Wilson, Robopocalypse. At the time, the director instead chose to take on his next project, War Horse, but it looks like Spielberg is now ready to return for some hostile robot takeover action.

According to sources, Spielberg has now committed to directing Robopocalypse as his next film. The director was so keen on taking this movie on, that he even began developing it and working on storyboards despite the fact that the book was incomplete and that he decided to do War Horse first.

We’ve certainly seen the story before: high technology machines and robots evolve, rise up, and take over the world of men. Whether it’s Battlestar Galactica, the Terminator franchise, or a movie like I, Robot, people love being scared by the thought of man-made machines turning on us and killing us all. If this trend is kept up, the robot apocalypse could become a genre in itself like zombies, but that isn’t stopping DreamWorks, who are on the verge of acquiring the rights to an unpublished manuscript entitled Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson.

So what makes this project so attractive? What makes Robopocalypse different from the other movies that we’ve seen? Well, it’s realism. Wilson is an actual Ph.D. in robotics, and he has injected a massive level of realism into his tale of man vs. machine, which is what immediately grabbed DreamWorks’ attention. Over the past few years, there have been some terrifying videos of actual man-made robots that are so freaky-realistic, you almost expect them to evolve and slaughter mankind.

Click over to see one video example of how robots are close to taking over the world!