Paramount Moving Full-Speed Ahead With Its ROM: SPACEKNIGHT Movie

According to Deadline...

"Hot off adapting the Ernest Cline novel Ready Player One for director Steven Spielberg, Zak Penn has signed on to adapt ROM for Hasbro’s Allspark Pictures and Paramount Pictures. Allspark Pictures develops and produces live-action entertainment around Hasbro brands and related projects."

Frequent BMD readers will know that this isn't the first time Paramount has threatened to make a ROM: Spaceknight movie. A quick look at the BMD archives reveals the studio has been talking about such a project since the end of 2015, when we learned that Paramount was planning to launch an entire cinematic universe based around Hasbro properties like ROM, the Micronauts, G.I. Joe and M.A.S.K. Rumors about the Hasbro Cinematic Universe have come and gone since then, but the news that Ready Player One's Zak Penn will adapt the character for his very own feature film represents the first real information we've heard about the endeavor in quite some time.

Obviously, the shared/cinematic universe game is an attractive one. Disney and Marvel are absolutely printing money with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and most of the other major studios have spent the past few years attempting to ape that success: Universal gave the Dark Universe a go (holy shit, remember the Dark Universe??), Sony's attempting to launch a Spider-Man-free universe of Spider-Man villain spin-offs (which will include this year's Venom and next year's Silver & Black) and Warner Bros. has been doing everything it can to make the DC Universe a viable rival for the MCU (their results have been decidedly mixed thus far).

Paramount, a studio which has earned no small amount of money on the back of its now-in-decline Transformers franchise, is clearly hoping to get into that game, as well. But will the Hasbro Cinematic Universe put butts in seats? Does Micronauts nostalgia really exist on the same level as Transformers nostalgia? Maybe we're wrong, but this feels like another Dark Universe waiting to happen, and at least with the Dark Universe we were talking about beloved and well-known characters. This whole thing feels shaky.

Anyway, what do we know? Maybe this is just the shot in the arm Paramount needs. We'll have to wait and see. While we're waiting, feel free to sound off in the comments below with your thoughts and feelings on the above: think the Hasbro Cinematic Universe will have enough juice to compete with the Big Boys? Think everyone's time might be better spent attempting to launch an original franchise (or even just a single good movie that might then serve as the launch pad for something bigger)? Do let us know.