What do you get when you mix Rocky and Robot Jox? I'm not entirely sure, but it sounds an awful lot like what Dreamworks has planned for Real Steel. If it sounds hokey to you, you might take some solace (or despair...take your pick) in the fact that Hugh Jackman is in talks to star.

According to Variety Real Steel is set in some future time when boxing has gotten too violent to be allowed (no indication of what this future Utopia makes of ultimate fighting). Instead fights involve one ton robots.

If Jackman has his way he'll play an ex-fighter turned down-on-his-luck promoter who discovers a tossed-aside boxing model with an unlikely habit of winning. Sort of a Mickey Goldmill meets Don King perhaps? The current version of the script was penned by Les Bohem (responsible for all that witty banter in Dante's Peak) and John Gatins (his last script was Dakota Fanning horse-flick Dreamer).

Steven Speilberg and Robert Zemeckis are executive producing. No doubt that means their new pet art form motion-capture CG will figure prominently into the robot action. Too bad. I thought it might be fun to see a couple of actors in oversized Twiki suits duking it out.

Dreamworks is looking to get the project on its feet by next summer so don't expect to see it in theaters until 2011.