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It’s an All Out Bidding War for ‘Voltron’

Fans of 80s animated shows should be rejoicing right about now as the 1984 cult hit favourite Voltron: Defender of the Universe seems to be on track towards the big screen.  There have been plans for a big screen launch over the years but none ever came to fruition because of rights issues with the original Japanese owners of the material. Then the legalities were finally resolved and concept art was leaked last fall from one of the contenders, Atlas Entertainment, which definitely caught some attention and gave renewed hope for a relaunch. Now we come to March 2011 where a bidding war has seemingly broken out over this hot property of the moment; which only pushes the possibility of an adaptation of Voltron closer to becoming reality.

As we speak, the competition is heating up as estimates say if this succeeds, studios are hoping for profits in the range of Transformers proportions. This is a fact that movie studios are motivated by even as figures also indicate it will cost just as much to finance the film. Relativity Media is one studio that has expressed a strong interest and leads the pack in acquiring the rights and even though it’s only been around since 2004, Relativity has amassed quite the roster of productions and is no stranger to big budget actioners. This is the same studio that gave us 2008’s comic adaptation Wanted, Will Smith’s Hancock, last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and the much anticipated upcoming J.J Abrams flick Super 8.

On the other side of the ring is the seasoned veteran, the much older and largely established studio Paramount Pictures. Apparently Paramount fits into this as sister company Viacom owns channel Nicktoon who is preparing a launch of a Voltron Force TV series in May, which may give it dibs on the franchise, all this according to Vulture.

World Events Productions are the de facto rights holders and executive VP of the company has said that whichever studio gets the Voltron project, development is still ongoing for the feature film and is still on track to enter theaters in 2013 or 2014!

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