Original Oblivion Screenwriter Harshly Criticizes The Film

The 2013 film Oblivion is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that was directed by Joseph Kosinski ("TRON: Legacy") and starred Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. Kosinski, originally began working on Oblivion for Radical Comics as a graphic novel. He was co-writing it with Arvid Nelson. It never became a graphic novel, but it did become material for his movie pitch. After Universal ended up with film rights The Departed screenwriter William Monahan was brought in to work on the script with Kosinski. His script was praised but then it went into the hands of several other writers to be "polished."

If you look at who is credited for Oblivion's screenplay you will see that Monahan's name isn't included. There is a good reason for it, he didn't want his name on it after seeing what was left of his original ideas. "I never tried for credit", he told Den Of Geek. "The director and the studio made their bed and they can have it. Not taking credit probably cost me a significant amount in royalties, but I don't care".

How different is the film from Monahan's script? "It differed enormously", he explained. "I'd written something I think was very good, perhaps a science fiction classic, which I imagine got the film greenlit, and then it was turned by subsequent writers into cannon fodder, despite Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman and Andrea Riseborough and Olga Kurylenko, all of whom I love".

The only material from Monahan's script that remains in the film is "drone behaviour, some story, the seawater collectors, and Horatius at the Gate."