Good ideas rarely make it through the Hollywood system without being ripped off and imitated, and actually, come to think of it, the same can probably be said for bad ideas as well. I’m still not sure which category DreamWorks’ Real Steel falls into, but it looks like it’s about to get some direct competition courtesy of Mandeville Films (Surrogates, Beverly Hills Chihuahua). When the first photo from Real Steel debuted online last week, a lot of people joked about the similarity to the classic ’60s toy Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Now it looks like there is actually a real Rock’ Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie in development… that’s right, yet another damn toy movie.

According to Pajiba, Mandeville and Mattel are teaming up for a movie based around the red and blue boxing robots. However, where Real Steel seems to focus on the human characters who control the robots, this movie is being described as “Gladiator meets Iron Man” and the “human story of one robot that becomes part human, part robot.” Uh… okay?

Apparently Wolfgang Petersen (Troy, Poseidon, Das Boot) is attached to direct, with Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium, Law Abiding Citizen) possibly writing the script. They could certainly do a lot worse, although at this point I have to remain suspicious of just about any movie based on a toy. What do you think, could this actually work? Which robot boxing movie would you prefer to see?