From The Little Mermaid to Aladdin to Moana to … DC Comics’ Metal Men?
That’s apparently the career trajectory that master animators Ron Clements and John Musker are on. The directing team behind some of Disney’s biggest hits —including all of the movies above, plus Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Princess and the Frog — is apparently jumping to the Warner Animation Group, where they’ll work on a cartoon feature based on DC’s Metal Men.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Clements and Musker are collaborating with writer Celeste Ballard on the project. Though they have no details about the storyline of the movie, they believe Ballard’s involvement points to a potential tone:
Details of the new take were not revealed but the medium of animation and Ballard’s work on Space Jam may point to a direction. Ballard … also worked on the TBS comedy Wrecked and MTV’s Sweet Vicious, with both featuring whip-snap and irreverent humor.
The Metal Men are a group of robots, each based on a different (duh) metal: Gold, Iron, Lead, Mercury, Tin, and Platinum. They were created by the brilliant scientist Dr. Magnus, with personalities and abilities inspired by their namesakes; Iron was very strong, Mercury could turn into liquid, and so on. Given their powers and their outlandish designs, they might be the DC Comics property most suited to animation.
Warner Animation Group has only been around for a few years but they’re already heavily invested in superheroes. Their releases to date include The LEGO Batman Movie, Scoob! (which was as much about Hanna-Barbera superheroes as Scooby-Doo), and next year’s DC League of Super-Pets, which features Krypto the Super-Dog and a variety of other super-powered animals fighting Lex Luthor. That sounds fine, but a Musker and Clements Metal Men sounds great.
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