The classic children's stereoscope toy View-Master is set to be featured in its own movie, as part of a collaboration between Mattel Films and MGM. The View-Master, which has been around since the 1940s, was originally comprised of reels of stereoscopic images that could be loaded into a viewer, and more recently has expanded to become a virtual reality system.
This isn't the first time that someone has tried to make a View-Master movie. A similar project was announced back in 2009 at DreamWorks, with Fringe writer Brad Caleb Kane set to write the script and Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman attached as producers. However, only one draft of the script was ever written and the project ultimately failed to come together.
Related: Orci and Kurtzman Talk 'Cowboys & Aliens' and 'View-Master'
Not to be deterred, however, Mattel and MGM are teaming up for another crack at a View-Master movie. Deadline reports that Mattel Films and MGM are currently developing a film based on the View-Master toy line, though no writers or director are attached yet. The toy company and film studio are also collaborating on a movie based on the American Girl dolls, which was announced earlier this month.
The plot of the View-Master movie remains unknown (it may not even have one yet), but Orci and Kurtzman's film was going to be about the View-Master transporting people to whatever world they saw when looking into it, which seems like an obvious road to go down. Jonathan Glickman, the president of MGM's Motion Picture Group, said that the goal is "to create a family adventure integrating the old school turn and click stereotypic device with the modern world of virtual reality."
Other films based on Mattel toys in development include a live-action Hot Wheels movie and a live-action Barbie movie at Warner Bros., and a movie reboot of Masters of the Universe at Sony Pictures.
While there will likely be some cynicism over the idea of turning the View-Master into a movie, audiences may well be a lot more open to the idea than they were the last time such a project was announced. The surprising success of The LEGO Movie showed that it's possible to make a movie about just about anything (even The Emoji Movie was a box office success), so with the right script a movie based on the View-Master could actually work.