Director Named for 'Voltron' Movie

Friday

29Aug

Friday, August 29, 2008 at 12:25PM

There's more news out of Camp Voltron. You remember Voltron, right? Kind of lumped in there with Transformers in the 1980s, and for the sake of convenience, let's just say they're pretty much the same thing, as far as someone unfamiliar with it is concerned. (After all, Transformers did eventually absorb the Voltron brand...)

The movie, unfortunately, was being conceived years before Transformers, so it's going to take a back seat again since the Michael Bay movie franchise is going to get even bigger next summer. But Latino Review reports that we now have a director for Voltron, and at least on paper, it's an unexpected choice that could pan out.

The new guy's name is Max Makowski, and while you may have seen the episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy that he directed, chances are you have no idea who he is. But look at the stuff he's working on: A movie for Universal based on the Japanese classic Shinobi, plus the screenplays for the Hawaii Five-O and Kung Fu adaptations.

At the very least, it seems as if the Brazilian-born Makowski can take you places if he has a map. Granted, we don't really have the results from any of these projects, but he keeps lining 'em up, so you'd have to think there's something to it all. I do think it's wise to pick a guy with a lot of experience adapting screenplays rather than writing originals. They can be a different process, as you have to understand the overall flow of the concept going in, determining what elements from the original make sense and which ones don't, and when you're carving up something audiences already have familiarity with, you have to be careful about what stays and what goes.

The other reason I'm giving Makowski the benefit of the doubt is because he's not a Michael Bay type. The only chance Voltron really has to survive is if it's radically different from what came before it. We had already heard that the movie would employ 300-style green screen technology, which is a start, and finding a director for whom we have no preconceived notions seems like the right thing to do.

Colin Boyd |

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