With one major robot action adventure franchise ending (for now) with this summer’s “Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon” there is now room in the universe for something to take its place, and Relativity thinks they have answer as they have snatched up the rights on a new live-action adaptation of “Voltron.”
If this all sounds vaguely familiar that’s because it kind of is. Last summer, it appeared that any chances of this happening were dead when the rights holders, World Event Productions, decided to kill plans for a film and instead focus on another rebooted animated series on Nicktoons and a new toy line from Mattel. But they then realized this spring that perhaps the best way to sell toys to kids and get them to watch cartoons would be to get a movie made, so they began to take meetings when Hollywood came courting for the rights. Well, a deal is in place though the project is already starting off on shaky footing.
Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, who together have teamed on such masterworks as “Sahara,” “A Sound Of Thunder,” “Dylan Dog: Dead Of Night” and the upcoming “Conan The Barbarian” will be writing the script. So yeah don’t expect your brain to be exercised any harder than it was for the “Transformers” movies (ie. not at all). For those of you who still have no idea what “Voltron” is, the story revolves around five people piloting giant-sized lion robot machines that join together to form one mammoth robot that fights evil alien invaders. And if that sounds far-fetched it’s not any more far-fetched than secret robot powers being hidden on the moon, with the first moon landing being a cover to….yeah, you see our point?
Earlier in the year World Events executive VP Robert Koplar said he was looking at a 2013 or 2014 release and that seems pretty realistic at this point.