With Hollywood running out of cool toys to make into movies, Jerry Bruckheimer settles for Beyblade
It's time to "Let It Rip," which is the thing people say in Beyblade
Say what you will about the Transformers movies, at least the toys they’re based on make sense as the building blocks of a narrative. They’re vehicles that turn into robots, the cars are good guys, and the jets are bad guys. It’s clean, it’s efficient, and it embraces the long-held animosity between cars and jets.
Now, at the risk of over-editorializing in a news story (Again?! On The A.V. Club?!), the same can’t really be said about Hollywood’s latest toy acquisition. According to Deadline, Jerry Bruckheimer of all people is set to produce a live-action movie based on Beyblade of all things, with writers Neil Widener and Gavin James handling the script. Deadline says the two of them have been attached to a few in-the-works projects, like a movie based on old DC character Hourman and another sequel to Now You See Me.
As for Beyblade, which is apparently very popular and inspired a cartoon and stuff, it’s basically a game where you wind up a little top and drop it into a bowl where it smashes against your opponent’s little top until it stops spinning or breaks or falls into a hole. Deadline’s story notes that some Beyblades include “Ultimate Frostic Dranzer, Spin Dragoon, and Saizo” and that they fight in arenas called “Beystadiums.” We are also now just realizing that Michael Bay, director of the awful Transformers movies, should be the one taking this on instead of Jerry Bruckheimer. We could’ve said “more like Michael Bayblade” and it would’ve been slightly funny!
Anyway, any information about the plot is being “kept under wraps,” either so nobody spoils whether or not Ultimate Frostic Dranzer ends up being the bad guy or because Widener and James haven’t decided how to make any of them a bad guy. But at least movies about tops are making a big comeback, 12 years after Inception.