Ever since my three year old discovered Ben 10 on the Cartoon Network, everyone in the house has devoured the animated series. I really dig the epic arcs, the humor, and the character design. While there have been a few live action animated Ben 10 live-action movies, those were made for television. The good news is Ben 10 is headed to the big screen with an eye on Warner Bros. to distribute the big screen adaptation of the cartoon franchise.
The thing that might have a lot of people hesitating on the news is word that Joel Silver has signed to make this movie a reality. While Silver is responsible for The Matrix and Die Hard, he’s also responsible for Speed Racer, Ninja Assassin, and Fred Clause. There’s a lot of winners and losers on his resume (including the movie The Losers), so it will be interesting to see what he does to make this movie fall into the success category.
“I tried to do (something similar) with ‘Speed Racer’ and failed miserably,” he said. “You always learn more from the ones that don’t work than the ones that do work.”
Steve Richards who is producing the movie told Variety that they are recasting the big screen adaptation and are hoping to go as big as possible with the project, hopefully pushing it to a big tentpole production. What will be really curious is to see if they stick with the ten year old Ben Tennyson, or the highschool-aged hero.
4 Comments
Even with Silver’s more recent hit-or-miss resume, it’s bound to be better than the made-for-TV movies. Should be interesting to see… unless they pull a Tintin and make it all horrifying mo-cap.
I thought the made-for-TV movies were decent, considering they were made-for-tv movies. The first one was somewhat confusing even for someone who watches the series, but the second wasn’t that bad (to me, at least) and had a bit more going for it. Although I think they could definitely have been much, much better.
But I’d love to see a proper, bigger budget big-screen movie done justice.
At least he admits his failures unlike some other movie people.
I’d rather have the teenage Ben 10 although, I’d be fine with either. I just think it makes a little more sense for Ben to be riding around with Kevin and doing all sorts of stuff on his own as a teen without people being all in his business than if he were younger. That and Gwen knows her magic and Kevin is there with his absorby stuff. And you can introduce all the other Plumbers’ kids too. Although, if they’re going for tentpole, they may want to go the Harry Potter route and start young and make a movie a year as long as they’re making money.