Brooklyn Nine-Nine Writer Reveals Their Scrapped Pitch For a NERF Movie

Following the success of Barbie, there has been a lot of scrutiny of Mattel’s aggressive plans to get as many of their toy properties onto the big screen as possible. Beyond Barbie and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Mattel has ideas for movies based on things like Hot Wheels and the Magic 8-Ball, and the idea of a string of big-budget blockbusters based on toys that often have really simple and abstract concepts is admittedly very funny. But it’s also not the first time this has happened. With the success of the early Transformers movies and later The LEGO Movie, Mattel’s rival Hasbro has long been in the process of developing a cinematic universe.

Fans likely got their first real glimpse at the universe earlier this summer, when a G.I. Joe base appeared in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, but it’s far from the first time they have toyed with the idea (no pun intended). After a number of movies went into development recently, Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer Van Robichaux said he was working on a NERF movie at one point.

“I pitched a NERF idea I loved a few back they didn’t go for,” Robichaux said on social media. “Get a Rock, a Hemsworth any big action stars. Hire a great action director and do a normal action movie but-every weapon’s a nerf weapon. Every bullet is foam. Never directly address it in the film and play it all straight.”

That concept sounds not entirely dissimilar to the famous “paintball episodes” of Community, a tradition that started with the 2010 episode “Modern Warfare,” directed by Justin Lin. In the episode, the school has a paintball tournament that goes absolutely insane, playing out like a real balls-to-the-wall action movie and putting Community on the map with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Psych, and Scrubs in terms of shows that can really deliver on wild high concept episodes.

Hasbro is back to developing a NERF movie, and it’s hard to imagine just what that might be if not something very similar to what Robichaux described. Like Barbie, it’s likely a movie with a brand as broad as NERF would have to be a little weird and meta — maybe even dealing with the idea of “nerfing” a character’s power levels. We’ll see if it happens and how in the next few years.