For all the ups and downs a movie adaptation of Voltron has faced over the years, never did things seem better than last September when it was announced that Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer - the writers behind Marcus Nispel's upcoming Conan The Barbarian - were hired to script what would be the first feature film version of the 1984 cartoon series and two pieces of concept art were released. Was hasn't been so inspiring since then is the absolute radio silence. Since that story broke last fall we haven't heard even the slightest peep from the project...until now.

Vulture is reporting that studios have begun a bidding war over the rights to finance the Voltron movie. While the story doesn't say exactly which studios are in the running for the World Events Productions-owned property, Relativity Media is definitely in play. In addition to the feature, a new animated series for Nicktoons is also in development and will make its debut this May. Should Relativity end up winning, it's unknown if they will handle distribution (Nicktoons is owned by Viacom which is a sister company of Paramount, meaning they could be the ones to handle its release). The expectation is that the movie could be released sometime in 2013 or 2014.

No matter how you break it down, it's still going to be a long time before a Voltron movie comes out, but at least fans can take solace in the idea that whoever ends up being the winner will likely make the project a priority. After all, why spend all that money on a possible Transformers-sized property and then let it sit on a shelf?