Paramount pictures has hired Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese to adapt the Hasbro toy line Micronauts to film.
The existence of the film project was only revealed a few days ago during a Hasbro investors meeting, which was primarily about Transformers 4.
Wernick and Reese also wrote the recent comedy horror flick Zombieland and the upcoming sequel to another toy adaptation, G.I. Joe, which is currently filming. On their own, each writer mostly worked on small budget films and television episodes.
Micronauts toy line was originally created by Japanese toymaker Takara. The American versions were made by Mego in the 1970’s, but never made it really big in the collector’s market. An attempt to renew the brand in 2005 was a failure, but in 2009 Hasbro made a deal with Takara to reimport and reinterpret the Japanese toy. The film will help solidify the brand for the American audience.
No official synopsis has yet been released for the film, but the story associated with the toys is thus: The Micronauts are microscopic robots – the toys are about three inches tall – which live in microscopic communities in a place called the ‘microverse’.
The microverse has governments, politics, and wars. Sometimes the invisibly small robots venture into the macroscopic world where they are toy-sized.
The stories in the comic books are surprisingly dramatic, and cover some heavy themes, but those stories were all published by Marvel, and Marvel likely still owns the rights to them. With them having their own film studio, Paramount might need to write an original story for the miniscule machines.
J.J. Abrams is already lined up to direct the film, and Brian Burk will produce alongside a couple of Hasbro executives.
