The once-bankrupt Toys R Us is now going to be a movie, possibly more than one movie. More on the story right here.
The film part of this story first.
Toys R Us Studios and Story Kitchen are coming together to make a live action movie about, well, Toys R Us. There’s a reasonable film idea too in the idea of something akin to a toy shop coming to life, and already one of the touchpoints cited by the producers is the Night At The Museum series. Further names such as Jumanji, Back To The Future, Big and – of course – Barbie have popped up in stories about the new film.
The non-film part is Hollywood’s current fixation with the altar of big business for its storytelling. Not just the products of big business a la Barbie (the film that so many studios are trying to replicate, with precious little idea how to), but the big names themselves. Blackberry is as good as these productions have got. On the flip side, even when you get something as impressively made as Ben Affleck’s Air, I couldn’t shake the idea I was watching a film designed to make me worship a multi-billion dollar brand.
Anyway, Toys R Us as a movie. As per Story Kitchen co-founders Mike Goldberg and Dmitri M Johnson, “Toys R Us is a cultural touchstone that continues impacting the child in all of us today … As 80s kids who considered Toys’R’Us one of the most magical places on Earth, we’re honored to partner to create a film that will capture the spirit of adventure, creativity and nostalgia that Toys R Us represents.”
See what I mean?
Presumably the whole thing will overlook the company going under in the UK in 2018, and the bankruptcy files in the US around the same time. It’s only in recent years that the name has been revived and stores began to come back to life. Maybe the film could be some kind of Jingle All The Way spin-off, where parents try and order toys from its website, and then hang around waiting for the delivery driver to bring them in an allotted time slot? My pitch is here if anyone’s interested.
No idea yet who’s going to be writing or directing the movie. Hopefully this will be start of a movie universe, with Boots The Chemist, Woolworths The Movie and Radio Rentals: Origins in development somewhere out there.
