Iconic ’80s Sci-Fi Franchise Gets New Movie At Amazon

Progress has been moving quite quickly on the project, with the idea for a Voltron live-action movie only first floated back in 2022. The project was reportedly being shopped around to multiple interested studios at the time, and now it is being said that the project has landed with Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon is said to be eager to move forward with the movie and will begin the casting process shortly.

Rawson Marshall Thurber is said to be one of the co-writers for the film, as well as being in consideration to direct the movie. However, the live-action Voltron movie will also have some support from the original creators, as Bob Koplar is said to be helping to produce on behalf of World Events Productions, who created the original ‘80s Voltron cartoon.

Fans of the original series from the ‘80s may not realize how active the Voltron franchise has been even before news of this movie came out. After the ‘80s series wrapped up, it had another sequel series in the ‘90s, Voltron: The Third Dimension. Then this series also had a sequel series in 2011, Voltron Force.

Many fans last heard of Voltron about a decade ago when it was announced that Netflix was rebooting the franchise with a new series, Voltron: Legendary Defender. This series proved to be very popular among fans and ran for nearly 80 episodes. It wrapped up in 2018, but seeing the passion that fans still had for Voltron in a more modern era no doubt had to play a role in interest developing for turning the franchise into a live-action movie.

As popular as Voltron is, it will be interesting to see how it translates to a live-action movie. Anime is pretty notoriously difficult to bring to live-action, as the over-the-top action, bright colors, and large personalities often do lend better to the world of animation. However, with those reported as being involved with the project so far, it does give fans some confidence that the project will be made by those who have a passion and respect for the franchise.

Evidently, the interest in the Voltron movie project was high enough that it initially incited a bidding war to gain the rights to it. Before Amazon won out, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures were also said to be in contention for gaining the rights to making the film. Based on that, it sounds like studios have a lot of confidence in a Voltron movie being a success.

At this stage, nothing has been revealed about any potential hopes for casting choices. However, with how much nostalgia plays a role in garnering interest for modern projects, one would have to imagine a Voltron movie would have similar levels of excitement to what the Transformers movies have been able to generate.