"Explorers," the 1985 Joe Dante movie where River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke build a spaceship and meet aliens, is getting the TV series treatment, just like fellow cult movie "Time Bandits."

And not just anyone is behind the project: Cary Fukunaga ("True Detective") and David Lowery ("Pete's Dragon," "The Old Man and the Gun") are teaming to write a pilot script for Paramount Television, Deadline reports.

The two will write the script together and one of them might be directing the pilot.

They're both busy, busy guys: Fukunaga,  just directed and exec produced the first season "Maniac" for Netflix and then he's tackling the 25th James Bond film.

Lowery just signed on to direct the Arthurian fantasy epic "The Green Knight" and is in pre-production on a new live-action version of "Peter Pan." He also directed the first two episodes of CBS All Access' "Strange Angel."

Can we hope for an Ethan Hawke cameo if the TV series actually happens? (Today, by the way, is Hawke's 48th birthday.)

In a 2015 video interview, Hawke recalls that the movie was a massive failure when it came out. He thought it was going to be the "next E.T," but instead it bombed: "I don't think it got one good review and nobody went to see it," he says. But, because he survived that, he said it "gave me the tools to survive 'Dead Poets Society.'"

So, it's a good thing that "Explorers" flopped?

[Via Deadline]