Heroes star Masi (Hiro) Oka has created a movie project called The Defenders, which he's sold to Dreamworks.
The story is about “a group of mostly teenagers from around the world who are involved in a multiplayer video game, each unaware of who they really are behind the cover of their consoles and avatars. They are forced to come together for a real adventure, becoming inadvertent heroes in the process,” according to the The Hollywood Reporter .
Oka himself is a on-line gameplayer, which is where he got the idea from (presumably there are people around the world who don’t know they’re playing against Hiro!). He will executive produce with Star Trek pair Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci producing. Gary Whitta (Book Of Eli and the Akira remake) is writing the script. DJ Caruso (Disturbia) is in negotiations to direct.
Orci says that he and Kurtzman were looking for "the kinds of movies that Amblin used to do, that combined an innocence with the adventure." The got chatting to Oka at a couple of parties (remember, there's the JJ Abrams link), and initially the actor was trying to nab a role in one of their movies. But when he heard they were looking for something along the lines of The Goonies, he pitched them his idea.
