'Star Trek Beyond' Director Justin Lin Tackling 'Hot Wheels' for Legendary
(Photo: Mattel)
By Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter
Justin Lin is revving up Hot Wheels.
The Star Trek Beyond filmmaker has closed a deal to develop, direct and produce, via his Perfect Storm Entertainment, a feature based on popular car toyline from Mattel.
Lin and Perfect Storm will also have an option to co-finance the project.
A Hot Wheels movie has never been made, despite iterations being in development since 2003. McG was at one point attached to direct and produce for Columbia before it landed in the garage of Joel Silver and Warners. Legendary picked up the rights in earlier this decade. Simon Crane came on board to direct it in 2013 but the project has been sitting idle since 2014.
Lin’s boarding injects some nitrous oxide into the project; Lin, his partner Troy Craig Poon, and Legendary will begin a search for a writer to take Hot Wheels back to the starting line. The project is in the early development stages and will not be Lin’s next movie.
Justin Lin (Photo: Getty Images)
Hot Wheels is one of the world’s biggest toy brands, with Mattel claiming that it is the best-selling toy in the world, with more than 5 billion toy cars produced since 1968. Mattel creates 9 million cars every week and sells 10 every second.
Legendary’s Alex Garcia will oversee for the company.
Mattel is slowly making inroads into Hollywood and has Max Steel, based on its action figures, opening Oct. 14. In development are movie projects based on Masters of the Universe and Barbie, both set up at Sony, and Monster High, set up at Universal.
CAA-repped Lin, who reinvigorated the Fast and Furious movie series into a full-blown franchise, directed and was a producer on Beyond, which was one of the better-reviewed films of the summer and course-corrected the Star Trek franchise for Trekkies.
Perfect Storm is developing Space Jam 2 on the film side and at least four television projects it is developing, including a new take on the police drama S.W.A.T.
Lin is repped by CAA, Cinetic Media and Sloss Eckhouse.
