Last month, word broke that Shawn Levy was working with Disney+ on a new TV series based on Real Steel. Levy, who directed the original 2011 film starring Hugh Jackman, is developing the show as an executive producer. The streaming service appears to be holding off on actually greenlighting the project until Levy can get a pitch together. But it sounds like every writer in town is trying to get in on the next round of boxing robot fights.
Real Steel was met with a lukewarm reception when hit first hit theaters over a decade ago. However, it seems to have developed a cult following in the years since its release. According to Levy, his phone has been ringing off the hook with pitches from potential writers ever since the spinoff was announced.
“We were slowly reaching out to some agents and writers,” said Levy via Collider. “’Hey, you want to write a Real Steel series?’ The day that story broke, we shifted into what we call the incoming call business, which is the business of you’re sitting back and your phone’s ringing and it’s just incoming calls. And it’s agents one after another saying, ‘My writer is dying to write it. Can you meet with my writer? My writer has an idea.’ So, it shifted the dynamic of the search for a writer and a take. And it just became a lot easier because suddenly the volunteers and the ideas were flowing our way.”
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Levy confessed his own surprise at the level of interest in the series. But although the interviewing process seems to be moving at a fast pace, fans shouldn’t expect cameras to roll anytime soon.
“It can’t be filming this year,” revealed Levy. “We have now a had several actual writer pitch meetings. We are narrowing down the search and the ideas behind the take. There’s a lot of different ways to go. It’s a little bit daunting because a lot of those ways are valid and cool. And which one is the right one? I’ll go back to something I said in our Adam Project interview. I’m just going to have to go with my gut about what is the right one, because there is no objective arbiter of right and wrong. I don’t think we’re going to, no. Because even once we pick our writer, we’re then opening a room, we’re breaking a whole season of television. So it’s more of a process. But we are definitely making good headway now. And the way the news broke and took off has been a big boon to the writer search.”
Are you excited to learn who Levy hires to write Real Steel? Let us know in the comments down below!
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