Hypothetically, if you were a major movie studio who just took a bath on a blockbuster based on an outdated toy, would you be so quick to scurry back into bed with a different toy maker on a possible new film franchise? Probably not. So why is Universal, which swung and missed on Peter Berg’s Battleship, looking to develop a film based on the Lego toy line of Hero Factory robots?
The studio would like to hire Predators scribes Michael Finch and Alex Litvak to develop a story based around the Hero Factory characters, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The trade says that Lego unveiled the Hero Factory story line in 2010 as a replacement for its popular Bionicle series. The Factory kits reportedly come with a rich mythology that could be researched and spelled out on screen, but I have two boys who should be in the wheelhouse of a Hero Factory story, and I haven’t heard “Boo” about it.
What’s it about? THR says the characters “hail from a planet where a factory churns out robotic machines whose goal is to fight intergalactic evil.” So this is more of a Transformers substitute than a new Battleship. Apparently this will be a live-action adaptation of the Lego toy line, and will differ from the CGI-heavy Lego animated feature that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller currently are working on.
Hollywood’s in a toy-to-film cycle right now. Board-game adaptations of Monopoly and Candyland are in different stages of develoipment. THR says Finch and Litvak have penned a script for a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe project. But for every successful Transformers film, there’s a Battleship failing to make much money. Do you think that Hero Factory has potential? Or would you rather see the film industry support more original franchises?
