by: Austin Welch source: The Hollywood Reporter
Unless you’ve been in a cave, you know that there will eventually be a live-action Voltron movie – rights holders World Events Productions sold the rights years ago. Currently, Atlas Entertainment and Kickstart Prioductions are hard at work, and as soon as they land a writer, they will shop it to studios. But it seems we may inundated with the V-man on multiple fronts in the near future.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, World Events has signed UTA as the combining robot’s agent, and plans for products ranging from video games to action figures, as well as a new cable animated series, are on the front burner. Both parties are hopeful that the brand’s recognition and rich storylines will bode well in a market that will soon be awash with feature films based on toys with no characters or storyline per se, such as Battleship or Lego. While Voltron does feature giant robots, unlike Transformers, they are non-sentient units piloted by humans, and therefore the potential for audience identification is greater.
Agencies are finding increasing success representing properties as opposed to actual people, in some case finding greater success than with a typical A-list celebrity. WME is over the moon with Hasbro, and CAA is in cahoots with Mattel.
We at the Realm are fans of The Defender Of The Universe, and welcome all of this – as long as it is executed with the proper care. A new, high-quality, hopefully less-campy animated series would just be awesome. And we’re sure the film will do well in the wake of the huge success of Transformers. Which once again proves my theory: people love giant robots!
