Mattel has been rifling through its toy cabinet looking for properties it can rejuvenate with a film version, and it looks like they’ve decided on Rock Em, Sock Em Robots, a 1960s game which involved two player pushing buttons to get robots to hit each other until one of their heads popped off (the robot’s head, not the player’s – well, hopefully not anyway).
The toy company is apparently working with Mandeville Films (The Proposal, Surrogates) on the project and they’ve attached Wolfgang Petersen, director of Outbreak and Troy, to helm it. At the moment, there’s no news on a story for the film, although Pajiba reports that Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, Salt) may be set to handle the screenplay.
The main problem with the film is that there’s already a movie in production that sounds like it could have been based on Rock Em, Sock Em Robots. Real Steel, which started shooting recently, stars Hugh Jackman as a boxer forced out of the sport when robots take over in the ring. He then turns promoter and connects with a son he didn’t know he had when they work together on a broken down bot, and try to make it a champion.
It may well be that as Rock Em, Sock Em robots is only in the early stages of development, Real Steel could kill it off, or alternatively if the Dreamworks movie becomes a massive hit, expect Mattel to start pushing its idea for a toy based robot movie for all its worth.