Hasbro has been essentially leading the table on big-screen toy adaptations for the past 15 years or so, but its Mattel competitors have been quietly putting together some plans lately. There is the new Barbie film that has been working for years, with Margot Robbie now attached to the star i Greta Gerwig (!) And Noah Baumbach (!) Wrote the script (we’re still not convinced all of this is true) and in February we learned that Lil Yachty starred in an “action robbery comedy” based on ONE (which doesn’t make much sense either, but we’re willing to shoot it). Now, it looks like Mattel came to a much simpler movie field Variety reports Vin Diesel will star in a live-action film based on Mattel and Universal Rock ‘Em Sock’ Em Robots—The classic game of hammering a small button until you break your opponent’s head or break the game and then start crying.
The film will be about a father and son who “form an unlikely bond with an advanced war machine,” and before attempting to argue that all this sounds a lot like the plot of Hugh Jackman’s 2011 film Real steel, we have a counterpoint: no one remembers Real steel, so no one will notice or care if it’s exactly the same movie. (That one was explicitly about boxing and seems to be rather one Harry and the Hendersonstype story about an unusual family friend, but sure, they both talk about banging robots.) Also, just to cut you off before making other jokes, Diesel will play the father and not the robot. He played a robot once and was very good at it, and his name seems to be the name of a robot, but he plays a human man with a son.
If you want to make jokes, let’s talk about Diesel’s statement about this announcement, in which he talks about the excitement he has of combining a classic game with “the kind of franchise success we’ve had with Universal.” This is a man who lives by sequels and derivations, and that must be killing him Bleeding it was a flop. But we can all forget, because here comes a new and exciting film franchise Rock ‘Em Sock’ Em Robots!