Large robots combining to make larger robots is cool, and Amazon agrees. Amazon is in final talks to make a live-action Voltron movie with so-hot-right-now director Rawson Marshall Thurber, who directed Red Notice and is working on an upcoming Dungeons & Dragons TV show. The bidding for the film, which sees Thurber also co-writing the screenplay with Ellen Shanman, was fierce, with studios and streamers wanting it, but Amazon seems to have won out.
Voltron will be based on the American-made ’80s cartoon, which took its footage from Japanese anime and has been rebooted several times since then, with Netflix giving the cartoon its most recent life with a successful series. That means we’ll probably see five lion robots come together to battle giant monsters or other robots, but aside from that little is known about the film. Most likely, Amazon is hoping it gets a kaiju-filled film franchise out of the deal and we’ll be getting multiple films and then spin-off films about each lion driver going on their own adventures and the spin-off films of those spin-off films until we’re watching a movie about the mechanic who maintains the mechs.
Todd Lieberman and David Hoberman are on board to produce with Bob Koplar, the head of World Events Productions, which controls the Voltron property. That’s some good news that the folks who have ushered Voltron throughout the years are still intimately involved. Hopefully, it also means that this attempt will actually get off the ground. A Voltron movie has been in the works in one way or another for decades and never gotten off the ground.
Just when the film will actually get underway isn’t clear. Thurber is an incredibly busy director at the moment as he’s not only working on Dungeon & Dragons but also setting up the shoot for the next two Red Notice movies, which are filming back to back. That could mean it will be a very long time before this ever happens, only raising the chances of it falling through.
