Dwayne Johnson remains committed to ping-ponging between family adventure and comedy projects and hard-nosed action. We’d consider a film about a heroic teddy bear to be firmly in the former category, and it’s something he’s working on with Journey 2: The Mysterious Island producer Beau Flynn and New Line.
So how does a piece of artwork inspire a film, we hear you ask. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin. Once upon a time, there was a Greek software developer (now based in New York) named Alex Panagopoulos, who decided to try his hand at fantasy art. He posted the resulting image (which you can see above) to the site Deviantart, where Hiram Garcia, who used to be Johnson’s assistant, saw it.
He brought it to Flynn’s FlynnPictureCo company and the studio, which has resulted in a deal for something currently called Teddy Bear.
As for the plot? That’s A) still a secret and B) likely in flux anyway because a writer has yet to be assigned. But we’d expect a blend of family-friendly questing as a stuffed bear defends his child from monsters and lots of teddy humour (though probably a little less rude than in Ted).
Johnson will be a busy man this year, with Snitch, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Michael Bay’s Pain & Gain and The Fast & The Furious 6 all hitting cinemas. It’s all-Rock all the time!