Jem And The Holograms Movie In The Works
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“Truly Outrageous!” With the success of the Transformers and G.I. Joe movie franchises, Hasbro is looking to develop movies based on their other popular toy lines. On deck next is a movie adaptation of Jem and the Holograms, but it’s coming from an unlikely group of filmmakers.
According to Deadline, director Jon M. Chu has announced that he will be helming the live-action adaptation of the popular ’80s toy line and cartoon that combined rock and roll and science fiction. Along with Chu, Jason Blum from Blumhouse Productions and media mogul Scooter Braun will also produce the film, while screenwriter Ryan Landels will write the script.
My only concern is that Jem and the Holograms creator Christy Marx was not asked to participate in the new film. Considering it’s a property geared towards the female audience, it would be nice for a woman to be part of the creative process, especially if that woman is the show’s creator. From Marx’s Facebook page:
I don’t think I can hide that I’m deeply unhappy about being shut out of the project. That no one in the entertainment arm of Hasbro wanted to talk to me, have me write for it, or at the very least consult on it. I wouldn’t be human if that failed to bother me.
My other unhappy observation is that I see two male producers, a male director and a male writer. Where is the female voice? Where is the female perspective? Where are the women?
While Marx, who also wrote for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, and Conan the Adventurer, is upset that no one at Hasbro approached her for about the movie, she does have kind things to say about director Jon Chu:
He (Jon Chu) treated me with honesty and respect. He is sincere, passionate, and filled with a desire to make the best Jem movie he can make. He wants to reinvent Jem for a current audience. His take is somewhat different from the approach I wanted to take, but that just means it’s different, not that there’s anything wrong with it. I urge everyone to judge the merits of his work on the result and I hope he delivers us an excellent, truly outrageous movie.
Chu directed Step Up 2: The Streets and Step Up 3D, the best movies in that franchise, as well as G.I. Joe: Retaliation for Paramount Pictures and Hasbro Entertainment. He’s also tapped to direct G.I. Joe 3. Jason Blum is the founder of Blumhouse Productions, the low-budget genre movie studio behind The Purge, Paranormal Activity, and Insidious. Ryan Landels wrote the screenplays for the films Collision Earth and Periphery, Texas, while Scooter Braun owns School Boy Records and Raymond-Braun Media Group.
Jem and the Holograms will follow “an orphaned teenage girl becomes an online recording sensation, she and her sisters embark on a music-driven scavenger hunt — one that sends them on an adventure across Los Angeles in an attempt to unlock a final message left by her father.” The original show was about Jerrica Benton, the owner of the record label Starlight Music. She had an alter ego named Jem, the lead singer of the rock band Jem and the Holograms. The show was all about Jerrica trying to balance her job as an executive with her secret life as a rock star, all with the help of her supercomputer, Synergy.
At the moment, there is no release date for Jem and the Holograms.
