Tag Archives: toys to films

Ever After High gets a movie and series deal on Netflix

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Ever After High Dolls

Ever After High is a spinoff of those Monster High dolls, except they’re based on fairy tales instead of monsters. Like Monster High, they have a bajillion characters and complicated back stories, including a bunch of webisodes, tv specials, and a book series. And now they can add a movie and Netflix original series to their piles of content! As Monster High has many more films and webisodes, Ever After High has a ways to go to catch up. But I believe in Ever After High!

All the characters are kids of fairy tale characters, so you get people like Humphrey Dumpty, the son of Humpty Dumpty; Cedar Wood, the daughter of Pinocchio; Dexter Charming, the son of King Charming, the twin of Darling Charming, and younger brother to Daring Charming; and Kitty Cheshire, the daughter of the Cheshire Cat. There are even one or two characters from Monster High that have transferred into Ever After High, because crossover money, baby!

Ever After High has no affiliation with that upcoming Disney Channel movie Descendants which has children of Disney fairy tale characters in high school. It does show that high school is the future of fairy tales.

No word yet on if that rumored live-action Monster High musical film is actually going to get made. UPDATE: @rwmead has pointed out they confirmed a 2016 release date last month, so fingers crossed!

via THR

Barbie gets a Malibu Dream Movie!

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Barbie life in the dreamhouse

We’ll be back, and with a new hat!


A bunch of properties got announce that they were optioned for films this week, and the least surprising among the group was Barbie. Barbie has at least 27 animated films released direct to video with more on the way, and there is even a surprisingly funny web series called Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, which takes place in a world where all the characters are dolls and Barbie has all the accessories and jobs she’s had over the past 60 years. It’s pretty tongue in cheek and the entire series is on YouTube and worth checking out if you need some fun goofy fluff.

The Barbie film is being fast-tracked with production set to begin at the end of the year. I’m pleased to see a surprising amount of female names attached to the project, specifically writer Jenny Bicks, who will be doing the script based on a pitch she created along with Parkes/MacDonald Productions. Mattel’s Playground Productions’ Julia Pistor will executive produce along with Parkes/MacDonald’s Marc Resteghnini. Sony studio chief Amy Pascal was instrumental in getting the deal done, aalong with production president Hannah Minghella. That is a lot of femme power, and hopefully it translates well into a good Barbie film that has a lot of female involvement, unlike the Jem movie, which seems to be going ahead with an almost entirely male writer/producer/director team. The real key will be if they attach a female director.

Besides the film being a life-action contemporary take on Barbie, no further details are available at this time.

Astute movie news fans might remember that a Barbie movie was promised way back in 2009, but it seems The Lego Movie making so much money was the final straw that pushed Mattel forward with going ahead with the deal. You might recall they originally didn’t even want Barbie in Toy Story, but after that made buckets of cash, the suddenly were okay with her showing up in the sequels.

via Deadline

The Lego Movie (Review)

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The Lego Movie

Lego Movie
2014
Story by Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman and Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Screenplay by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Lego Movie
The Lego Movie constantly refrains the song “Everything is Awesome!” throughout the film, and though the song is presented as a joke because things aren’t awesome, it best describes The Lego Movie. Because everything is awesome. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller took a toy commercial and traditional hero’s journey narrative and turned it into a celebration of tossing out instructions and a collectivist uniting against conformity and conservatism. Also it’s fun and hilarious.

The unlikely group of heroes unite against President Business, who controls the entire world and wants things to stay just the way they are. He gets incensed when things are built that don’t follow the rules or are weird. His reign has seen the Lego city become a virtual police state where everyone follows a huge list of rules and destroys anything out of the ordinary to be replaced with construction that follows the rules. The people are lulled into accepting their reality with glee, thanks to control of television and music, where every show is Where’s My Pants? and every song is the aforementioned “Everything is Awesome!”
Lego Movie
The resistance becomes a celebration of individuality vs marching to the same drum beat. The Lego Movie encourages you to build what you want, and not worry about if your projects conflict with what someone expects you to do. While President Business seeks his stagnant perfection, the real progress and fun comes from the chaos of creation.
Lego Movie

Emmet Brickowoski (Chris Pratt) – Emmet is the most average man who ever averaged, and even when he follows all the rules (and there are a lot of rules), no one seems to remember him much at all. But things change when suddenly the Piece of Resistance is stuck to his back, and it looks like he has a prophesy to fulfill. If he can just be interesting!
Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) – A Master Builder who searches for the Piece of Resistance and finds it on Emmet. She mistakenly thinks he’s much more powerful than he actually is. But despite her disappointment, she becomes part of the inspiration for Emmet to rise up beyond his lot in life. Is dating Batman.
Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) – Wise sage who prophesies the downfall of Lord Business and the Piece of Resistance. He’s blinded, and later begins training Emmet, though there is little time for actual training. Has trouble telling Gandalf and Dumbledore apart.
Batman (Will Arnett) – The best movie Batman since Adam West. The caped crusader joins the mission to save the universe because he’s Batman and that’s what Batman does. He’s dark. Also he’s dating Wyldstyle, in between making his music. FYI, people in the audience cheered when Batman showed up.
Lord/President Business (Will Ferrell) – Lord Business is President of the Lego city and controls all aspects of it, in a creepy Big Brother way. He’s also a super villain, who has stolen an artifact that he plans to use to end the world (which involves freezing it in place.) That is, unless he’s stopped by The Piece of Resistance!

Lego Movie
Minor spoilers below the fold!
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Hot Wheels is now a movie about a burnt out cop

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Hot Wheels Logo

When you think Hot Wheels, you think the toys cars you played with as a tiny tot or perhaps the cars you kept displayed on the wall as an older than a tiny tot. Hot Wheels generally only had the plot of whatever you made, which was usually cars racing and crashing. Though 1969-1971 did see a Hot Wheels cartoon series that focused on high schooler Jack “Rabbit” Wheeler and his Hot Wheels Racing Club. There was no further Hot Wheels activity until 2003’s Hot Wheels World Race movie on Cartoon Network. That lead directly into the Hot Wheels AcceleRacers series of movies, which features racing across multiple dimensions, sentient evil robotic racers, alien racers, and a grand conspiracy. I must point out that one of the characters is named Porkchop. This series was never finished, so break out your fanfic typewriters!

Hot Wheels then went all CGI for Hot Wheels Battle Force 5, which features a few of the characters from the AcceleRacers, though it doesn’t seem to explain how they got there. Someone help me out here, I’ve not watched any of these! There are alien mutant animal drivers, which should be enough for me to watch as that’s close enough to Battle Beasts for me to be interested. And robot drivers, because robots are cool.

With all this alien robot mutant legacy in Hot Wheels, you would think the movie would be fantastic. Or at least follow The Fast and the Furious. Well, you are wrong! The current version of the script (at this point the Hot Wheels Movie development is 10 years old!) is:

The story centers on a washed-up Illinois State Trooper who, after a dangerous military device falls into the hands of a criminal, fights the man his father once put behind bars

Yes, it’s totally a story that kids love. Feel the wheel! I can’t tell you how many kids playing with cars are like “I’m Trooper Steve, who’s sick of giving tickets!”

Did anyone have those Hot Wheels cars that you could crash into walls and they’d have “damage”? Make a movie about that.

Octorod

Screw Hot Wheels, make a movie out of these Weird Wheels cards!

Cody the Robosapien – A Robosapien movie was completed!?!

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Cody the Robosapien

The robot R.O.B. made fun of on the playground!


Remember long ago when there were robot dinosaurs at that store in the mall that sold expensive office things that’s somehow still around in this terrible economy? And then there was a robot guy, and then they all disappeared and this was 2004? Well, that robot is now a slightly different robot and a movie that was announced so long ago I had forgotten about it has been completed. Cody the Robosapien (formerly Robosapien: Rebooted) has hit trailer and will soon hit theaters where you can not go see it and it will bomb like it’s Ben Affleck in Phantoms!

Henry isn’t the most popular kid in school. So, when he comes across a broken robot named Cody, things start to look up. After fixing him, Henry discovers that Cody isn’t your average automaton — he’s a highly intelligent search and rescue robot!

The new friendship looks like it may be brought to an abrupt end however, when the military lab that created Cody tries to seize him back. When they then kidnap Henry’s mother and Cody’s inventor, it’s up to one boy and his robot to outwit their captors and save the day!

From the producer of Spider Man, X-Men and Iron Man, and co-starring David Eigenberg (Sex And The City) and Penelope Ann Miller (the multi Oscar winning, The Artist), Robosapien blends fast-paced action and mischievous humour to create a rollercoaster ride of an adventure that all the family will love!

Just once I want to meet a bullied kid who then gets bullied by the robot/gremlin/troll/Munchie/Gooby that befriends him. Also this may be where that rumored Short Circuit remake ended up, because the plot sounds very similar…

And it’s directed by Sean McNamara, who you might recall directed Bratz and also directed the upcoming Baby Geniuses movies Baby Geniuses and the Mystery of the Crown Jewels, Baby Geniuses and the Treasures of Egypt, and Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby!

The Lego films are going to be damn awesome!!

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Lego Batman

The Lego film seems like it will be amaza-tastic! Also damn awesome, since that’s what I wrote in the headline. Co-directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (21 Jump Street and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) and featuring voices of many a talented actor: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, and Alison Brie.

There will be largely animated with a few live-action components. Lego: The Piece of Resistance will also feature Superman and Batman in the same film, showing that a cartoon can do in theaters what Warner Brothers is too stupid to pull off themselves for decades! Other rumored licensed Lego properties for cameos include Yoda and Indiana Jones. The film is tracking so well they’ve bumped up the release date, from February 28, 2014, to February 7, 2014. That’s still way too long for impatient me.

Regular Lego figure Emmet (Chris Pratt) is mistakenly identified as the key to saving the Lego world and he’s forced to go on a quest to stop an evil tyrant. President Business (Will Ferrell) is the evil CEO who is too evil to manage his personal life correctly, and Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) is his henchman.

If you can’t get enough of Lego Superman and Lego Batman, then you are in luck, as there is also going to be a Lego Batman DTV flick with Superman guest starring! The trailer released is pretty much just cut scenes from the video game, but the story so far is there will be new animation in addition to these cut scenes to make a full film. So we will see. Even the cast list for LEGO Batman: The Movie is the same for the rumored voices in the Lego: The Piece of Resistance – Will Arnett as Batman and Channing Tatum as Superman. This is like synergy or something. I hope they make Lego films for those awesome monster hunters sets I see at the stores.

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Lego Joker