Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Is Working on a Movie About a Robot Family in Peril

If there’s one thing worth fighting for, it’s family. Even if—especially if?—that family is made of loving, preternaturally caring robots.

Variety reports that Spielberg’s production company, Amblin Partners, has acquired the worldwide rights for The Mother Code, an upcoming science fiction novel by Silicon Valley biochemist Carole Stivers. Amy Louise Johnson (Nightflyers) will be adapting the book into a script for Amblin.

According to Variety, the story is about a world where a biological weapon has nearly destroyed Earth, leading scientists and the government to place unborn children in the care of artificially intelligent robot mothers. When the government turns on these machine mothers, one boy raised by them will fight to save his human-robot family.

It seems like an absolutely Spielbergian premise—a child protagonist, some good room for sentiment, arbitrarily evil government officials—and it could be something promising. Though it probably won’t be premiering on Netflix.