Raise your hand if you ever had the full rights to develop and distribute a live-action Voltron movie. Anyone? Nobody? How about you, New Regency? There was that announced deal that would see Fox sending your Voltron flick around the world, right? And yet, as it turns out, New Regency never …quite…got the rights together in a deal with the Japanese holding company.
Consequently, New Regency has put Voltron in turnaround. Transformers 2 and Robotech stand as the remaining big studio big robot pictures. Optimus Prime and Minmei high-five. Cut to a lineup of five sad metal lions.
But wait. Relativity Media thinks they can get it together. They’re in negotiations to strike a new deal for Voltron, albeit on a reduced scale, and consequently a reduced budget. This is where Variety gets to drop one of the trade’s favorite phrases: “using the type of cost-effective technology employed in films including 300.” The Mark Gordon Co. remains on board as producers, with Mark Gordon and Jordan Wynn as producers and Bryan Zuriff as Executive Producer. Word is they could have a director within the week.
But what of the Justin Marks script, which framed the five-lion gang bang in the context of a post-alien assault, post-apocalypse revenge slog against otherworldly invaders? No word if he or someone else will re-write for a smaller budget, or if there will simply be a lot more CGI silhouettes in this version, kinda like a feature film version of the opening to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, only with lion robots. Or perhaps a Relativity Media intern has written a PERL script that can just zip through Marks’ screenplay and excise all the expensive words.