Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is set to direct and co-write a film adaptation of the 1960s animated show, The Jetsons, with Jim Carrey in talks to star. A filmmaker who’s been busy since the early 2010s, Colin Trevorrow has headed up smaller indie films – Safety Not Guaranteed, The Book Of Henry – and ... The Jetsons | Jim Carrey in talks to star in feature adaptation from Jurassic World director
Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow is set to direct and co-write a film adaptation of the 1960s animated show, The Jetsons, with Jim Carrey in talks to star.
A filmmaker who’s been busy since the early 2010s, Colin Trevorrow has headed up smaller indie films – Safety Not Guaranteed, The Book Of Henry – and big-budget behemoths – Jurassic World.
Having written and produced the disarmingly warm-hearted improv comedy thriller Deep Cover this year (a Film Stories mag cover star!), Trevorrow appears to be swinging back to the big-budget end of the filmmaking spectrum for his next film.
Trevorrow is, according to The Hollywood Reporter, preparing to co-write and direct a feature-length adaptation of The Jetsons – the Hanna-Barbera animated comedy that began in the early 1960s and ran for 75 episodes. If The Flintstones was a slice-of-life sitcom about an ordinary American family who happened to live in the Stone Age, then The Jetsons was its science fiction opposite.
Set in the 21st century, it imagines a world of flying cars and mining colonies on other planets, all seen from the perspective of the titular family, comprising father George Jetson, his wife Jane and their two kids Judy and Elroy. Its vision of life in the future is fuzzily utopian, with George working short hours at an engineering firm and household tasks mostly left to robots and gadgets. It’s the kind of thing sci-fi writers have long since stopped thinking about.
Jim Carrey is said to be in talks to star in the movie, which we’re guessing will be live-action rather than animated. It’ll be fascinating to see whether Trevorrow and co-writer Joe Epstein adapt the show with its upbeat tone intact, or whether they make it into a reflection of our own 21st century. There are self-driving cars, but they tend to randomly crash; George and Jane both work 50 hour weeks to afford their massive mortgage; their kids sit at laptops and get AI to write their homework for them. Something like that.
It’s far from the first time such a project has been talked about. A live-action Jetsons was first discussed as long ago as 1985, but to date, hasn’t happened. We got an animated feature in 1990 – Jetsons: The Movie – and the odd TV movie and special before and after that, but attempts to make it into a film with physical actors haven’t gained much traction.
Rob Minkoff, Adam Shankman and Robert Rodriguez have all been attached to a Jetsons film at one stage. Time will tell whether Trevorrow will get it over the line. For many years, he was at the helm of a Flight Of The Navigator remake – a film first talked about over a decade ago, but was subsequently cancelled.
More on The Jetsons as it comes in.
