Frankly extraordinary news this morning. Following yesterday's announcement that rickety vector-based arcade game Asteroids is getting the big screen treatment (which at least makes a sort of sense given the apocalypse-from-space potential) comes news that Viewmaster is next.
Viewmaster, for those of you young enough not to remember, which is probably most of you, was a cross between a slide projector and a pair of binoculars. It was originally invented as an educational device for vicarious sightseeing, but kids in the pre-VHS seventies could also use it to look at pictures of The Pink Panther.
Now, our first thought on reading this story (which comes from a Twitter tweet, via European site GreekGeek and ComingSoon) was that this might be like The Hudsucker Proxy: a goofy comedy about a daft invention.
But no, apparently, according to writer Brad Caleb Kane (currently working on Uprising for Wolfgang Peterson), it's to be in the vein of the "old Amblin movies: Goonies, Young Sherlock Holmes..." The currently ubiquitous Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Transformers) are producing.
So, kid finds magic Viewmaster that transports him to the places he looks at? Kid finds magic Viewmaster that reveals his parents are really alien lizards? Kid finds magic viewmaster that allows him to see dead people? Give us your plot ideas, because ours sound rubbish.