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Hugh Jackman Might Be Starring in Shawn Levy's Real Steel

by Alex Billington
September 30, 2009

Big casting news for a DreamWorks project. Variety reports that Hugh Jackman is "in talks" to star in Shawn Levy's Real Steel, the BattleBots-like movie about a father and son who take a robot to the Bot Boxing Championship. However, the bots in this aren't small. The film is set in the near future, where people control human-like 2000-pound robots that duke it out in the boxing ring. Kind of like the gaming in Gerard Butler's Gamer, but with a better story. Variety calls it a "Rocky-with-robots saga" with Jackman playing "an ex-fighter who becomes a promoter when human boxing is outlawed for being too violent."

So Jackman isn't playing the father in the story, or maybe he is? The story continues: "The new gladiators are 2000-pound robots with human qualities. The ex-fighter's access to sub-standard robot parts hampers his hopes for glory in Robot Boxing, until he discovers a discarded robot that always seems to win. The ex-fighter has also discovered he's the father of a 13-year old son, and they bond as the robot brawls its way toward the top." So that father-son part of this was a spoiler? Levy, who just completed the comedy Date Night, came aboard the project several weeks ago. The studio hopes to get underway before next summer.

If all of this doesn't have too excited just yet, you may think otherwise once you hear that Steven Spielberg and ImageMovers' execs Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey are executive producing. This is going to be a big movie, that's for damn sure. We'll let you know if this is indeed Jackman's next project or not, as it sounds like DreamWorks really wants to get this going sooner than later. Anyone interested?

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