Plans for the family action flick, Real Steel, seem to be moving ahead at lightning speed. It was only announced a couple of weeks ago that Shawn Levy was taking over directing duties from Peter Berg, and now Variety reports that Hugh Jackman is in talks to take on one of the main roles in the film.
The Wolverine star will play an ex-boxer, whose career goes into a tailspin after human fighters are replaced with 2,000 pound humanoid robots. He becomes a boxing promoter, but has trouble with the fact that his bots as rubbish, until he finds a discarded robot who always seems to win. His fight to the top with this new underdog champion also becomes a way for him to bond with the 13-year-old son he never knew he had.
At the moment Josh Gatins is rewriting the script with Levy (which is based on a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson, of I Am Legend fame), and the hope is that production will start next May, for a summer 2011 release. Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg are executive producing.