Real Steel was one of those mid-range summer blockbusters that fought for screen space alongside blockbusters like Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean and X-Men in the summer of 2011, and still emerged with a respectable $300M at the worldwide box-office. It’s the kind of film we’re unlikely to get again in a post pandemic-era multiplex landscape, so the next best thing is to develop it for a streaming service, and that’s exactly what Disney+ are doing with Shawn Levy’s robot Rocky.
Collider report that Disney is in very early development for a TV series, and having negotiated contracts with those involved with the original film, they’re now actively looking for someone to write the show. The executive producers on the Disney+ series will include Levy, Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke, Jacqueline Levine, Susan Montford and Don Murphy.
Reel Steel was based on the short story “Steel”, which was written by I Am Legend‘s Richard Matheson, and tells the story of a future in which fighters have been replaced by robots, and now former boxer Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) pieces together scrap metal into low-end fighters, barely earning enough to make it from one underground venue to the next. After hitting rock bottom, Charlie reluctantly teams with his estranged son, Max (Dakota Goyo), to build and train a championship robot for a last shot at redemption.
The film also stared Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man and The Wasp), Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and The Winter Soldier), Kevin Durand (Lost), Hope Davis (Greenland), James Rebhorn (Independence Day) and Karl Yune (Arrow).
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