We understand why studios are eager to turn toys into franchise films, but we seriously don’t understand the fascination with turning toys that nobody plays with anymore or cares about into movies. First, we have a movie based around those Troll dolls being put in development over at DreamWorks Animation and now Pajiba reports that Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, those stationary boxing moulds of plastic are being prepped for the big screen by Mattel.
But perhaps more baffling than the idea behind the film is the talent circling the project. Wolfgang Petersen (“Das Boot,” “In The Line Of Fire”) is attached to direct with fanboy favorite Kurt Wimmer (“Equilibrium,” “Law Abiding Citizen”) potentially writing the screenplay. Obviously, there’s no mythology or story to these toys, but the film will apparently be a “Gladiator” meets “Iron Man” story of a robot that becomes part-human/part-robot. And then we presume it is forced to beat the shit out of some bad guy robots or something and then it learns to love. Whatever.
For Petersen, this adds another project to his growing plate of potential followup gigs to his awful remake of “Poseidon.” As he discussed back in the spring, he’s got a big-budget, high-concept alien film “Uprising” as well as a potential remake of the celebrated anime “Paprika.” Both of those sound expensive, risky and not likely to happen right now in today’s climate so a toy movie might be right thing to get him out of director jail and helming his own passion projects. But Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots? Really?