The latest toy-to-film adaptation is heating up. We already knew a Hot Wheels film was in the works, but the project has now found its writers. Dalton Leeb and Nicholas Jacobson-Larson have been hired to pen the script for the live-action adaptation of the 54-year old racecar toys.
The duo are up and comers in the industry, having recently sold their original sci-fi spec Endurance to Netflix, with Simon Kinberg producing after a multi-studio bidding war. The script follows a group of AI robots that have been marooned on Mars and begin to turn on one another while setting up a colony for humans.
They’re also writing The Fall for Amblin and Blackmaled Productions, and the pair also wrote Strongman, a darkly comedic reimagining of the making of the original Star Wars trilogy through the eyes of David Prowse, the English bodybuilder behind Darth Vader’s mask. That earned them a spot on the 2017 Black List, the list of best unproduced screenplays.
It’s still unclear exactly how the Hot Wheels film will work, but many of these toy adaptations look shaky and not fully thought through at first. In the end it will probably be a car-centric action film with plenty of nostalgia baked in.
Mattel Films are unsurprisingly also developing many other movies based on their best-selling products, including films based on Magic 8 Ball, Barney, Masters of the Universe, Polly Pocket, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and Uno. Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie film, which will star Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, hits cinemas in July.
#Peace.Love.HotWheels
