Having just wrangled together the various disparate elements of Ready Player One for Steven Spielberg, Zak Penn is now turning his attention to something that could very well have popped up in the Oasis. He's now on to adapt ROM for Paramount and Hasbro.
The studio and the toy company's Allspark Pictures production arm have been looking at ways to bring ROM to screens, aiming to craft a cinematic universe of plaything-spawned characters.
ROM debuted in 1979 as a toy, one of many spurred by the success of Star Wars. The backstory finds the cyborg hailing from the utopian planet Galador.
Though the toy was not a great success, ROM also launched a Marvel comics series, ROM: Spaceknight, which had him battling the Dire Wraiths, with the fight coming to Earth and elsewhere. And because it was Marvel, he eventually met up with the Avengers. Given that this is a Paramount film, don't expect him to join then MCU any time soon.
Penn has also been busy working on a script set within the universe of The Matrix, but that one has yet to get close to shooting. Ready Player One is out on Thursday.
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