Dreamworks is moving forward with its adaptation of the board game Monsterpocalypse, which is being developed as a future directorial project for Tim Burton - and yes, it will be released in 3D.
Early rumors had Burton pegged as the "creative consultant" for the project, with his frequent collaborator John August penning the screenplay. Now Monsterpocalypse producer Roy Lee (How to Train Your Dragon) has confirmed that Burton will not only work on the visual design of the film alongside Oscar-winner Ken Ralston (the FX supervisor on his Alice in Wonderland) but is set to direct it as well.
Burton and August are also currently working together to bring the ghoulish soap opera Dark Shadows to the big screen in the near future. According to Lee, the matter concerning whether Burton will helm that project or Monsterpocalypse will first depend on the quality of the first drafts of August's screenplays for each film, respectively.
Monsterpocalypse will be Burton's third 3D outing after Alice and his upcoming feature-length version of Frankenweenie, which August is scripting as well. For better or worse, when Burton finds an actor or craftsman that he likes (see below for the most obvious example), he tends to stick with them.
The plot of the Monsterpocalypse movie begins with an early battle between humanity and giant, other-worldly monsters that attack Earth. Although the monsters are seemingly defeated, it is eventually revealed that the creatures have instead buried deep within the layers of the Earth and sent out a distress signal to rally their allies for a future attack on the planet.
The human characters respond to this impending threat by constructing a league of skyscraper-sized robots that they control and run directly - like they would any sort of regular vehicle. Most of the film will revolve around the fight between the mechanical warriors and their extraterrestrial opponents.
Despite its presence in the original Monsterpocalypse board game, the Voltron bots will not be amongst the ranks of the gigantic fighting machines in the film adaptation - fans of that series will have to instead hope that the rumors claiming the Voltron movie is not dead are in fact true.
Burton will lend his twisted visual sensibilities to the look of both the robots and monsters so it will be interesting to see how that turns out. An action movie about enormous creatures wrecking havoc on the planet certainly lends itself to the 3D format so it makes sense that the Monsterpocalypse movie is being developed with the extra dimension in mind.
It goes without saying that this project will not exactly be an Inception-like bit of blockbuster entertainment but really, can it be any more mind-numbing than the Transformers movies? ;)
Monsterpocalypse should reach theaters by late 2012.
Source: /Film