Poor old Stretch Armstrong. He’s been through the development ringer for years now, bouncing from studio to studio and picked up (then dumped) by filmmaker after filmmaker. Now another company has decided he’s not their favourite toy, with Relativity Media backing away from making the movie.
Stretch, as you may be aware, is the action figure toy with the rubbery limbs and torso that can be stretched out and always retain his shape. First launched in the 1970s, it was successfully re-introduced to sadistic, limit testing kids in the 1990s and continues to be a presence today. In its time wandering through limbo, Breck Eisner has considered making a movie based on it, and for a while there, Stretch was to be portrayed on screen by Taylor Lautner, a period where the jokes pretty much wrote themselves.
Yet nothing came to pass and Relativity picked the property up in early 2012, only to announce that it wouldn’t move forward this weekend. “Stretch Armstrong is an incredible character who will make an amazing movie, and we know that Hasbro has some new ideas they are looking at. Relativity and Hasbro have a tremendous relationship, and we decided to focus on other projects,” Relativity spokesman David Shane says in a statement bounced online by Variety. “We look forward to continuing to work together.” Back in the cupboard, Stretch. Try not to gather too much dust...