Refusing to let America’s overachieving G.I. Joe hold all the big Hollywood action blockbuster money in his infamous kung-fu grip, Hasbro has announced that it’s giving the U.K.’s classic Action Man his own movie. The film, directed by The Muppets’ James Bobin, will be based on the British take on the classic soldier doll—whose extensive history, including the exciting addition of “flock hair” in 1970, you can read all about right here—and not, sadly, on this guy from The Venture Brothers:
This isn’t the first time Action Man has been adapted to the screen; 1995 and 2000 both saw cartoon versions of the character hit the airwaves, with the latter adding in an ever-fresh “extreme sports” angle to lure in the kids. The Action Man film rights are currently held by Hasbro, whose previous feints into the world of film include the Transformers movies, Battleship, and, of course, the two Channing Tatum-starring G.I. Joe films from 2009 and 2013. The film is being written by Simon Farnaby, who recently had a nice little hit with Paddington 2, and who will presumably be very careful to make Action Man a distinctly stiff-upper-lip version of the usual explosions-and-CGI-monsters Hasbro movie formula.