“Form feet and legs! Form arms and torso! And I’ll form the head!” And form an orderly queue folks, because at long last, and after many failed attempts to bring Voltron to the big screen, the wildly successful mecha anime series is getting the Hollywood treatment at last. Yes, as per The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive announcement yesterday, Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber is in the hot seat to give the Robot Lions their first live-action cinematic outing.
According to THR’s reporting, a package including an original Thurber pitch and teaser reel has been floating around Hollywood for the past fortnight, with Warner Bros., Universal, and Amazon among the studios vying for rights to the blockbuster project. Strangely, it would seem that Netflix, who produced Thurber’s Red Notice and the animated offering Voltron: Legendary Defender, aren’t in the running.
Originally based on the 1981 Japanese sci-fi series Beast King GoLion, Voltron was edited and dubbed by World Events in 1984, and repackaged as a syndicated show called Voltron: Defender of the Universe. The series centered on five young pilots in the Robot Lions battalion, whose vehicles join together to form a mega robot known as Voltron. It’s a little bit Transformers, a little bit Power Rangers, a smidge Pacific Rim, and remains to this day a very, very cool concept.
The new Voltron film will boast an original Thurber story, which the director will co-write the screenplay for with Tiger & Bunny and Crave scribe Ellen Shanman. It’ll also be produced by live-action Beauty & The Beast duo Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman, alongside World Events Productions head Bob Koplar.
As the film hasn’t even found where its landing yet, a confirmed release date is a while off. But, with a deal expected to be reached by as soon as this weekend, it looks like it’s time for Voltron to finally assume what may well be its greatest form yet.