The long in development, live-action version of Robotech is one step closer to reality.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers has pulled out the director’s seat for Nic Mathieu to direct the big-screen version of the popular anime series.
The gig comes with a lot of potential and pressure. Warner Brothers sees Robotech as a potential franchise along the lines of Transformers. That could equal a huge budget for the project as well as it being a tent-pole film for the studio. This project would be Mathieu’s first directing gig.
The script has undergone multiple revisions and writers and it’s likely to get another pass or two once Mathieu officially comes on board.
The producers conducted an exhaustive search in the fall to find a director who could bring a cutting-edge and modern approach to Robotech, which was was a cartoon series during the 1980s from Harmony Gold USA and Japan’s Tatsunoko Prods. It was re-edited and re-dialogued to combine three Japanese anime series to give the producers enough episodes to air as a daily syndicated series.
A sprawling sci-fi epic, Robotech takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific island. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.
Hmmm… Very ambitious. It could be an enormous bag of suck, but if the Director really has a clear vision on how to do this and doesn’t allow it to be diluted for budgetary or “political” reasons then there is a chance that it could end up being something pretty fantastic!
An interesting project to be sure. However, I have very fond memories of watching Robotech in my early teens so I have no little measure of trepidation. Ben’s got it right; this could be an awesome film if it is given all the proper resources and has a decent director and writer. Otherwise, it will suck, and suck hard and I will never ever forgive Warner Brothers their sin.
Yeah, it could be good or it could really smell up the theater. I loved the show when I was younger, and my eldest is getting into in on Netflix. She was excited when I told her about the movie being in production.
Hopefully they won’t mess it up too bad.
I don’t see how Robotech could become a movie without cutting so much out of the series. It sounds like the movie will have to focus on the Macross Saga and unless they’re going for a series of movies like Harry Potter (something which I don’t think the IP can manage) we’re going to be left wanting.
The problem, as I see it, is that secondary characters wind up being critical in some key events. If those characters are cut then the plot will have to find some way around it and potentially ruin the story.
If they were smart. They would talk to these guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fp8hhXaMfQ