How To Train Your Dragon director Dean DeBlois is about to make the jump to live-action. Despite having two Oscar nominations under his belt for his animation work, he’s turning to live-action to adapt the Hasbro toy line Micronauts into a movie.
Per THR, the original 1970s toys led to comics which “told of a Microverse in which diverse worlds were linked together and in which a power mad dictator named Baron Karza kills the royal family, taking control. A small group of eclectic characters – a pilot awoken from a centuries-long deep sleep, alien gladiators, survivors of the coup – band together to form a resistance”.
This adaptation has been in various stages of development for a long time. J.J. Abrams was on board to produce an adaptation in 2009, before Zombieland writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese had a go at the script in 2015. Paramount and Hasbro also considered their own interconnected toy universe with Micronauts sharing the same world as G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., ROM, and Visionaries.
Those ideas are out the window now as studios have pretty much realised that the MCU was lightning in a bottle and not something that can be easily replicated. The new Micronauts take will simply focus on a gang of intergalactic explorers.
Obviously The Micronauts doesn’t have the sort of brand recognition Transformers or G.I. Joe has, so the film will have to be sold on its story and visuals. Fortunately, DeBlois has repeatedly shown to be very adept at both of those. The jump from animation could prove tricky, but the How To Train Your Dragon trilogy is great proof that he can craft an immersive, entertaining world.
The Micronauts is already scheduled to open on June 4, 2021.
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