When Universal Pictures and its parent company NBCUniversal purchased DreamWorks Animation back in August, the new owner had quite the list of projects to comb through. One of them appears to be a live-actionVoltronmovie. This idea was quietly being developed byJeffrey Katzenbergwhen he was heading up DWA. The animation company already released the most excellent first season of a new animated seriesVoltron Legendary Defender, which will return to Netflix on August 17, 2025.
Deadlinereports that the inherited movie project is only in the early script stage at the moment. Universal is basically biding their time, probably to see how the newPower Rangersmovie does and to keep an eye on the box office-busting franchiseTransformers, before moving forward with production. The good news is that screenwriterDavid Hayteris the one penning the script.Tom Engelmanwill produce.
Hayter has a handful of screenwriting credits to his name, with more that have been announced, but they’re big credits.X-Men,X2, andWatchmenare Hayter’s produced comic book scripts while his work onBlack Widowwas previously announced. He also happens to be the voice actor behind a wide range of video game characters, most notably that of Solid Snake in the “Metal Gear Solid” franchise. I mention all this just to bolster Hayter’s nerd cred, something he’ll certainly need to tackle a live-actionVoltronscript.
The story ofVoltron, in its various iterations, follows a team of astronauts/explorers who discover five powerful, gigantic robot lions who fuse together to create the massive legendary robot, Voltron. The mecha is one of the largest in the history of the sub-genre, even larger than the original base version of the Megazord fromPower Rangerslore. (Feel free to start a fan petition for a crossover battle between these two similar franchises.)
Universal certainly isn’t afraid of going big on the big screen, though the joint production ofPacific Rimmight have left them a little gun-shy about getting back into the mecha game. The status of the sequelPacific Rim: Maelstrommight also determineVoltron’s fate. On one hand, ifPower Rangersbombs and theTransformersfranchise shows signs of slowing down, Universal might scrap the legendary defender at the script stage. ThePacific Rimsequel is inpre-production with shooting scheduled to start soon, so that picture is pretty well locked-in. Will Universal double-down on mecha movies? Stay tuned to find out!
