As announced last year, in between Fast 6 and Riddick, an unnamed project by the Unknown writers and his long-cherished Hannibal epic, Vin Diesel is making time for a family-friendly adventure. And it looks as if The Machine may now have a director, in Peter Segal.

Diesel is producing as well as starring in the film, which sees him play a Pentagon-created ultimate weapon who's been mothballed for twenty years but is accidentally reactivated by a young boy who becomes his new best friend. Cue said terminator finding a family and deciding he wants to be nice, just as the bad old government realises an ultimate weapon is just what it needs. Yes indeed, it's The Iron Giant And The Hendersons.

The Machine's writers are Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, who were responsible for Vin's The Pacifier. Segal's last movie project was the so-so Get Smart with Steve Carell, but he's worked most often with Adam Sandler: he directed Anger Management, Fifty First Dates and The Longest Yard. 

There's no start-date yet, and Segal is already attached to Grudge Match and also very keen to get moving on the manga-adaptation Bleach, which he's also producing. So if he does sign on the line for The Machine, it may still be a good while before we see it...