Benjamin Button screenwriter Eric Roth told Collider ‘s Steve Weintraub last Sunday that he’s working on an “original idea” for a “space movie” that would be “somewhere between the intelligence of 2001 and the mythology of Star Wars, so I don’t know where that leads you.

“But I don’t want to make it so intellectual that it’s confounding, but on the other hand I’m not so sure I can write the kind of wonderful fantasy that Lucas does, so maybe it would have…I don’t know…I don’t know. I can’t answer that because they’re going let me just sort of say fade in and see where I go. I think it will be great. I have an idea. It’s a terrific idea, I know that. Whether I’m able to be able to do it, I don’t know.” But Warner Bros., he said, is “down with it.”

WB is down with it, of course, because they’re attracted to the elegant prestige factor that comes with Roth’s name. They know full well that if his final draft doesn’t turn out to be Lucas-y enough — ooh-aah, CG-heavy, fanboy-friendly — they can always finagle things.