Color me surprised – Sin City: A Dame to Kill For director Robert Rodriguez is making his return to the family-friendly market with his next film. It’s being reported that Rodriguez is officially attached to direct a live-action film adaptation of the 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Jonny Quest.
The news comes at a crucial time in Hollywood where beloved children’s franchises like Jem and the Holograms, Peanuts, and Power Rangers are finding modern film adaptations after years of (questionably) successful film adaptations of other shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, and Transformers.
While Rodriguez is most notably recognized for his ultra-stylized Sin City films, the director has found more success with his other franchise: Spy Kids. Rodriguez should find no trouble translating his abilities shaped by the four Spy Kids films with the Jonny Quest adaptation, given the two series’ common threads of family-centric importance and action/adventure/spy/sci-fi settings.
Rodriguez will co-write the film’s screenplay with Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lone Ranger) based on a draft written by Dan Mazeau (Wrath of the Titans, The Flash). Previously, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac Efron were on board for a proposed Jonny Quest adaptation, but the project never took off.