The last time that Vin Diesel, director Adam Shankman, and writers Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant teamed up the results were not pretty. I am, of course, referring to the 2005 family comedy The Pacifier, which featured the Fast & Furious 6 star playing a disgraced Navy SEAL-turned babysitter. The film got crushed by critics, but actually wound up being a big box office hit, making over $100 million domestically on a $56 million budget. Still, you can excuse us from being excited about the group's next collaboration.
According to Deadline, Shankman is now in talks with MGM to direct The Machine, a new family comedy that Lennon and Garant originally wrote (it has since been rewritten by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar) and that Diesel has been attached to since May of 2011. The plot description says the film is about a robot (Diesel) that was designed by the Pentagon to be the ultimate weapon. The project is eventually scrapped and buried, but 20 years later the Diesel-bot is discovered and activated by a child. The government then swoops in to try and take control of the situation and the robot must protect the family he's staying with.
The site doesn't mention when they are planning to start production, though it's worth mentioning that Diesel's summer will likely be dedicated to filming 7. Shankman's last feature effort as a director was the 80s metal musical Rock of Ages with Tom Cruise, and he most recently directed the television show Glee's 2012 Christmas episode.
