The hit cartoon series, Ben 10, has already gone live-action with a couple of TV movies, but now Variety reports that super-producer Joel Silver wants to take it big screen and big budget, having signed up to develop a movie version of the Cartoon Network series.
The film, which will likely be distibuted by Warner Bros., will be about Billy Tennyson, a boy who can transform into 10 different alien creatures, with the help of a glovelike device called the Omnitrix.
SIlver says, “I think we have to try something fresh and go at it in a way that stays true to the original material. I have a 5-year-old and a 9-year-old, so it’s somewhere between them.” Quite how you do something fresh and true to the original is a bit of a mystery, but Silver adds, “I tried to do (something similar) with Speed Racer and failed miserably. You always learn more fro the ones that don’t work than the ones that do work.”
Well, at least he’s prepared to concede Speed Racer was rubbish.
Ben 10 is a big enough franchise that it could make for a very popular tentpole release, and while Silver is a big name in the world of producers, he hasn’t had a huge amount of success in the family arena. Hopefully though he can remedy that here.