Fresh off the enormous success of Twilight: New Moon, Taylor Lautner and his handlers are looking for new projects for the young heart-throb. Now there’s news that new project may be a superhero film. According to the LA Times, Lautner is in the running for the lead in Max Steel - a Paramount project based on a highly successful line of Mattel toys.
The toys spawned an animated TV series, which gives us some clue as to Lautner’s potential role. He would star as Josh McGrath, an extreme-sports athlete who is exposed powers of nanotechnological machines. McGrath develops increased strength, near-invulnerability and the power to change his appearance.
Sounds cool, but do the ladies young girls who rush to the theater to watch Lautner really want him changing his appearance? I guess so long as it involved him shedding his shirt, the theaters would sell tickets.
Paramount is probably hoping to piggyback on both the incredibly growing star power of Lautner as well as the ridiculous success of the Max Steel toy line. According to the LA Times article, the toys pulled in $100 million in worldwide sales in the first year alone. Am I the only one who didn’t realize that toys could bring as much as major motion pictures?!
Recent toys-to-movies experiments have proved to be a resounding success. Paramount’s G.I. Joe raked in $301 million worldwide earlier this year, and Dreamworks’ Transformers series has brought in a combined $1.54 billion. Could a Lautner-led Max Steel bring home the bacon as well?
We’ll have to wait and see. J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani are still working on the script, so it’ll be a while before we see Lautner other than his role in the upcoming rom-com Valentine’s Day.
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