You know which company hasn’t started building a cinematic universe yet? Nobody. At this point, it seems like every company has a cinematic universe. The newest company to take another huge step into that space is Hasbro, who wants to combine several of their classic toy lines into a series of feature films. It would be easy to believe they were just jumping into this without a plan but that’s not the case. Not only are they about to start putting their plan together, but they’ve put together a who’s who of Hollywood to help create said plan, including a Pulitzer Prize winner.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the writer’s room has been assembled to begin to build the structure of the Hasbro Cinematic Universe. The group will be sitting down together on the Paramount lot for the first time on Monday. The group includes a number of names that you’ll likely know, including author Michael Chabon, who was involved in some of Spider-Man 2, as well as Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter Nicole Perlman. Comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan and Cleo Coker, the showrunner for Luke Cage are also on board along with several other comic, TV, and movie writers.
The room certainly has its share of creative individuals and more than a few that have experience working with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the gold standard by which all the rest of these will be judged. People like Nicole Perlman can help teach anybody who needs to learn any of the details about creating this shared continuity between feature films. There are also a couple of straight comic book writers on the team, and since comics are where the entire concept essentially originated, there’s knowledge to be mined there as well.
Screenwriter and producer Akiva Goldsman will be running the group, a position he also holds with the Paramount/Hasbro Transformers franchise. According to this news, the Transformers will not be part of this larger Hasbro universe, as they’re trying to build their own world with additional sequels and spinoffs. Instead, the Hasbro universe will focus on G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K., Visionaries, Micronauts and ROM.
It will be interesting to see what this team is able to put together. While the G.I. Joe brand is a recognizable one and has been the subject of a pair of movies already, many of these other toy brands are much smaller ones that you likely only remember if you were a child during the appropriate decade (does anybody other than me even remember Visionaries?).
What other Hasbro brands would you like to see join a cinematic universe? What kind of hopes do you have for this one? Let us know in the comments below!
