According to the Hollywood Reporter, Universal has won a bidding war for a script titled “Little America.” The script is an action film set in a dystopian future and features a Trump-like president:

Described by sources as a “sci-fun” story rather than “sci-fi,” the tale is set in a dystopian future where a Donald Trump-like president has bankrupt America and China has called in its debts. The Asian giant now owns America and many Americans have immigrated to China looking for work.

In this new world, a former American Force Recon member is hired by a Chinese billionaire to go into an American ghetto and rescue his daughter. Sources have said it is in the tone of Escape From New York, the 1981 John Carpenter film that starred Kurt Russell.

Michael Bay, director of the Transformers movies, is set to produce.

A couple things about this. First, as a fan of John Carpenter and Escape from New York, this sounds like something I might go see. If the emphasis really is on fun, rather than making this a thinly-veiled partisan lecture, it could be a fun premise.

As for the dystopian future, isn’t this the sort of bad outcome that tends to reinforce a conservatives view of the world? It’s conservatives who are most concerned about the nation’s growing debt problem (currently approaching $20 trillion). Meanwhile progressives have advised we spend more on stimulating the economy and attacked austerity efforts. So, point one, this doesn’t necessarily sound like an attack on the right so much as a confirmation of their own worst case scenario about the country’s future.

Second, it seems like every film that comes out these days gets attacked for something, even the ones made by fellow-travelers like Joss Whedon. So the film will have to offer the left something in the form of cultural appeasement and a Trump-like President seems like an easy choice.

But it’s worth noting that in Escape from New York the president was central to the plot. He was the person Snake Plissken had to rescue. It sounds like the president is not a major character in this script, at least based on the description.

That said, it’s pretty absurd that five days into Trump’s presidency Hollywood is already going with a dystopian future for America. Some people just need to get a grip.