Relativity Media is courting World Events Prods. to become the funding producer on the VOLTRON live-action feature, reports Vulture. Atlas Ent. producers Charles Roven and Richard Suckle and screenwriters Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (CONAN THE BARBARIAN reboot) have been developing the script.

Ever since the series became a huge hit in the late 1980s, Hollywood has been interested in the property as a feature film. But legal issues stopped this from happening. Creator Peter Keefe acquired two different anime series from Toei and cut them together to make the series. Once the show blew up, Toei wanted to get paid. World Events finally secured the rights in 2000.

Since then World Events Prods. has developed a new animated TV series, which will start airing on Nicktoons in May. On the feature front, Mark Gordon (GREY’S ANATOMY) had been developing a version from 2005 to 2007, but the project stalled at New Regency, because Toei came back claiming World Events didn’t hold feature rights. Later it negotiated those rights as well.

World Events EVP Robert Koplar projects that the feature will hit theaters in 2013 or 2014.