Paramount and producer, Jerry Bruckheimer announced a live-action Beyblade movie is in the early works of development.
What is Beyblade, you may ask? Glad to answer. It is a toy franchise that was spawned in 1999, created by Takara Tomy. It has just been announced this week that big time producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Paramount will be adapting a live-action movie—based on the toy and TV show property. Could this potentially be another franchise to add to the roller coaster ride Transformers movies?
Bruckheimer has had much success with producing great movie franchises like National Treasure, Bad Boys and, most notably, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He is famous for producing the competition show, The Amazing Race, and the most devilish comic book-based drama, Lucifer. The next biggest project from Bruckheimer (and Paramount) is the long overdue Top Gun: Maverick film—bringing back Tom Cruise to reprise the famous role of Maverick.
Going more in-depth with Beyblade, the spinning top toys were meant to rival the popular Pokémon franchise, which led to the anime TV series, Beyblade, that began in 2001. Now, the franchise has evolved into the Beyblade Burst series, which has been airing on various TV networks like Teletoon and Disney XD.
Various toy companies have sold Beyblades, including Hasbro. The concept of a Beyblade match consists of two competitors loading their radically cool-looking spinning top into a “Bey Launcher” which uses a ripcord device that generates the spin force while releasing the Beyblade down into the Bey Arenas/Stadiums. A Beyblade match is resolved when one of the competitor’s Beys stops spinning either from taking a lot of hits or from the lack of spinning stamina.
Now, when most people hear about Hasbro films, the immediate thought goes to the Transformers explosion fest flicks by Michael Bay. But there were also the sad attempts of the G.I. Joe movies and the Battleship movie many have scrubbed from their minds (I personally enjoyed it). While Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins was a chance of redemption, it was still not as greatly received as the Transformers films. It may be bold to say that Beyblade might work better with its popular toy sales of hundreds of millions of units sold, but we will all see when the reviews and box office numbers are released.
While there were not any announcements about the director of the Beyblade film yet, Neil Widener and Gavin James have been hired to write the script. Both writers have been working on the comic adaptation of DC’s Hourman with Warner Bros, DC Films and Chernin Entertainment. They are also working on the third illusionist film in the series, Now You See Me 3, with Lionsgate.
Paramount had just had their announcements of upcoming projects from their Investors Day, which shows hope that the Beyblade may be one of the great things to come from the studio. Of course, many are waiting to see the anticipated Halo TV series being produced from the TV studio side while the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 trailer dropped on the movie studio.
With the resume of Bruckheimer and Paramount, the best possibility is that the toy series will continue to thrive, regardless of the live-action movie’s reception. It would be really nice if it did not completely suck though. No further details have been released on the production start date.
