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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

The announcement that John Cena has signed on to be the star of the new Matchbox live-action movie raises a few questions. First—there’s going to be a Matchbox movie? And second—what will it be about, exactly?

We know that Cena is a car guy of broad tastes: He owns a couple of classic muscle cars but daily-drives Civic Type-R, and he’s of course part of the Fast and Furious franchise of films. He’s also the kind of charismatic lead that doesn’t mind a bit of fun at his own expense. (His comedic timing probably comes from his days as a professional wrestler.)

What’s going to be in the script that gets handed to him?

With 2023’s Barbie hitting more than $1.4 billion in worldwide box offices, you just know Mattel is looking over its various intellectual properties and imagining a Scrooge McDuck–sized swimming pool of cash. There’ll be a Hot Wheels movie at some point, and since that franchise already has spawned multiple video games, it’s easy to imagine some kind of film with action-packed racing and huge stunts is in the offing, like a G-rated version of the aforementioned Fast and Furious. Matchbox is different, though, with quintessentially British roots, and a less wildly creative nature than Hot Wheels, its corporate sibling.

What Hollywood should do, but probably won’t, is tell the real story of Matchbox, because it’s the tale of the rise and fall of the greatest toy-car empire in the world. It’s a story of postwar resilience, of a company holding out against hard times and fighting off market change. There are plucky East-End Londoners getting away with schemes on the side, a public-transit system sponsored by a toy-car factory, and, at the heart of things, a skilled and slightly rebellious engineer.

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