With the worldwide success of DreamWorks/Paramount’s Transformers, 20th Century Fox’s New Regency is apparently hot to bring to the screen another ’80s cartoon about big, shapeshifting robots. According to Daily Variety, the production company is in negotiations with the Mark Gordon Co. to make a live-action/CG feature based on Voltron: Defender of the Universe.
The Voltron script is being written by Justin Marks, who is adapting He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the Green Arrow movie, Supermax, for Warner Bros. He has also been tapped to pen an adaptation of the Street Fighter video game for Hyde Park and 20th Century Fox.
Marks’ Voltron treatment reportedly takes place in post-apocalyptic New York City and Mexico as five survivors of an alien invasion take control of lion-shaped robots in order to strike back at the extraterrestrial threat. Like Transformers, the film will surely employ a good deal of digital animation to bring the cartoon and toy property to multiplexes.
New Regency has some experience with combining live actors with CG animation, having made the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks movie. Also in the works as the busy production company are director Doug Liman’s time-travel thriller Jumper and the Eddie Murphy vehicle Starship Dave, among others. Mark Gordon Co. is producing Roland Emmerich’s prehistoric drama 10,000 B.C., which Warner Bros. will release on March 7, 2008.
