Jerry Bruckheimer Bringing A Ridiculous Toy Franchise To The Big Screen
Well, we wish him luck.
This article is more than 2 years old
Jerry Bruckheimer’s name has endured as a producer of some of the biggest blockbusters Hollywood has ever seen, and he’s been producing flicks since the early ’70s. Bruckheimer is one of the names behind film series like Beverly Hills Cop, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, Bad Boys, National Treasure, Top Gun, and plenty of big ticket standalones like Armageddon and Pearl Harbor. Now, after bringing us pirates and renegade cops, the producer is bringing us toys. He’s bringing us spinning top toys, to be specific. The producer is developing a film for the Pokémon competitors Beyblade.
On Thursday, Deadline reported that Jerry Bruckheimer is not only in early development for a Beyblade film, but it’s not like any Beyblade media that’s been produced. While the spinning top toys have already been brought to the world of anime and comics, the project Bruckheimer is developing will reportedly be live-action. Few details have been released, though currently the script is being worked on by Neil Widener (Subdivision, Colorado) and Gavin James (Footsteps). Along with the untitled Beyblade film, Widener and James will apparently be collaborating quite a bit in the near future. Deadline notes that both are working on the screenplay for the upcoming heist thriller sequel Now You See Me 3, as well as collaborating with Jerry Bruckheimer on Hourman — an upcoming DC superhero film for Warner Bros.
The Beyblade spinning top toys that Jerry Bruckheimer will bring to the big screen were first released in Japan in 1999, developed by the toy company Takara. Their popularity grew to the point that other toy companies began licensing the toys for other regions, including Hasbro who sells Beyblades in Western countries such as the United States. Like their competitor Pokémon, Beyblades are designed for players to compete with one another. Players have their spinning top toys compete against one another in accessories called Beystadiums. If one player’s Beyblade stops spinning, a point is awarded to their opponent. Likewise, a point is won if your opponent’s Beyblade falls out of the Beystadium or into one of its pockets. You get two points if you get your rival’s Beyblade to “burst.” The first player with three points wins.
If you’re wondering how exactly Jerry Bruckheimer or anyone else could turn this into a coherent narrative, well as mentioned earlier, it’s already been done. From 1999 to 2004, for example, the Beyblade manga was serialized in the monthly magazine CoroCoro Comic and 12 years later the sequel series Beyblade Rising was released. Beyblade‘s hero is Tyson Granger, a young boy who can’t get enough of the titular toy. The series begins with Tyson and his best bud Kenny competing with other kids in their neighborhood. Things get more complicated when Tyson discovers a Bit-Beast living inside the Beyblade named Dragoon. There’s no word if Bruckheimer and co. will be using Tyson and his allies for their film, or if they’re going in a new direction.
Jerry Bruckheimer has always been a pretty busy guy, and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon. Along with now developing both the untitled Beyblade live-action film and Hourman, Bruckheimer is busy working on Disney+’s upcoming National Treasure TV series. The long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick, which Bruckheimer produced, will finally release this year on May 27.
