Hasbro and Universal Pictures have announced a deal to produce a movie based on the retro Stretch Armstrong toy. Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster) and screenplay writer Steve Oedekerk (Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty) will team up to bring Stretch to the big screen on April 15, 2011.

“Stretch Armstrong is a character I have wanted to see on screen for a long time,” said Grazer. “He’s an unconventional kind of super hero with a power that no one would want. It’s a story about a guy stretching – if you will – the limits of what is possible to become all that he can be.”

Blond and uncannily flexible, Stretch Armstrong was originally produced in 1976 and was re-launched in the 1990s with a new villain and canine sidekick. The movie is the latest in a number of Hasbro toy and game products to be announced as receiving the big-screen treatment (see “Board Game to the Big Screen”, “Ridley Scott to Direct ‘Monopoly’, “’Battleship’ Gets Director, Writers”, “’Pirates’ Helmer Gets a ‘Clue’”) as part of a six-year agreement between Hasbro and Universal (see “’Monopoly,’ ‘Magic’ Movies on Tap?”) in the wake of the great success of Universal’s 2007 Transformers movie.