Unboxingthe movie? And you couldn’t believe they made an Emoji movie. Wait until you hear what Hollywood has cooked up next. The art of Unboxing, which has become a Youtube phenomenon, is being turned into a big screen monster flick with aGremlinslike twist. It sounds kind of dumb at first, but it actually makes perfect sense when you hear the whole idea out loud. This just might work.
Sure, the Emoji movie was a critical and box office disaster that failed to connect with just about everyone on any level. ButUnboxingmight be pretty cool, if done right. It also sounds like the perfect way to reignite the tiny monster genre that was so prevalent in the 80s, withGremlinsleading the charge that saw other cult favorites such asGhouliesandCritterscome slithering out of the woodwork.
Paramount Players has acquired the script forUnboxing, the comedy thriller is coming fromJim Hecht, who is perhaps best known for writingIce Age: The Meltdown. That means this is definitely going to have a few family elements, asGremlinsdid, but it probably won’t go as dark. Indie studio Pocket.watch will produce the feature film, which sounds like quite a bit of fun, actually.
Former Nickelodeon and HLN boss Jim Hecht will produce. He is now the chief creative officer at Pocket.watch. The story will follow a mischievous 11-year-oldYouTube star. Though she has been forbidden to do so, the young girl will crack open the secret safe her father has hidden away in his room. What seems like a small act that will bring sometraffic and ad revenueturns into a true nightmare when the girl unleashes the ‘treacherous Puck and his band of evil tricksters on a small town.’
Jim Hecht is reuniting with Paramount after rewriting the old unproduced John Hughes scriptThe Gribsbys Go Broke. He is also currently working forNetflix, writing their original movieOut of Stock. He will also adapt the Playboy articleThe Big Cigarfor Warner Bros. which focuses on Black Panthers co-founder Huey Newton. Going from closet monsters to Huey Newton is a pretty big leap, especially when he’s best known for working on the Ice Age franchise. But he seems talented enough to get all these high-profile jobs finished with the right amount of gravitas.
Pocket.watch CEO Chris M. Williams will executive producingUnboxingwith Ali Bell overseeing the project for Paramount. So far, there have been no casting announcements for this unique thriller, though it does sound an awful lot like the plot behindGoosebumps, where a couple of kids unlock a book of monsters and unleash them on a small town. Perhaps this movie will take things in a new direction? We hope.
It’s unclear whenUnboxingwill begin shooting. The movie probably won’t go into production until sometime in mid 2019 at the earliest. So we can expect to seeUnboxinghit the big screen sometime in 2020. Perhaps it will be one of that summer’s big tentpole movies. It certainly has a lot of potential if done right. They could even go darker and do a Dark Web Unboxing movie. That sounds like it has a lot of scary potential too. This news comes fromDeadline.
