| In case you missed the news last year, action maestro Joel Silver is putting together a live-action Ben 10 movie with the Cartoon Network. You know, for kids. And the movie just got a little closer to fruition this morning, with the news that Albert Torres is now hard at work on a screenplay. Ben 10, for those not down with the kids, is a hugely successful series that began in 2005. Our hero, Ben Tennyson, has a watch-like device that allows him to transform into ten superpowered aliens (one at a time). With the help of his cool granddad and younger sister, he's already used his unusual abilities to fight evil across three separate series and two spin-off TV movies directed by Bill and Ted's Alex Winter. Lee Majors played Grandpa Max, in his retirement from being the unknown stuntman who made Eastwood look so fine. For his big screen incarnation, Torres is tasked with turning Ben into a "big-budget, tentpole, action driven adventure", presumably with the weight to kick off a new arm of the franchise. Torres' previous work has often been somewhat adult-oriented: he was involved with Very Bad Things, and has a script in development based on Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor. But he also wrote the lighter Henry Poole Is Here, and was recently one of several writers to take a stab at Warners' Akira. Maybe that means his head is currently in the right place to come up with a huge live-action FX extravaganza based on an animation.* Ben 10 doesn't have a studio yet, but everyone's expecting Silver to find it a home at Warner Bros. He promises it won't be like Speed Racer. We didn't actually think Speed Racer was that bad. *And yes, we know Akira is a six-volume manga as well as a famous anime, but you take our point. |
