Hollywood goes Otaku....; Hooray or Fuck?

[shadowDOESrock]

Today I was glancing over some things and I realized that the same release year is slapped on any number of the Hollywood anime films I have listed. Now, be wary of the dates: they could easily be pushed back, bumped forward, and some of these movies may never actually come to fruition. Not to mention, all information on IMDb should be taken with a grain of salt anyway.

Still though, look at 'em all:

AKIRA – Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Appian Way, to be distributed by Warner Bros., this is actually supposed to be the first of two films that combine to retell the story of Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, though it's interesting to note that IMDb cites the movie, not the manga, as the source material. As always, though, that could be totally bogus. Akira is set to be directed by Ruairi Robinson, whose credits are minimal but respected; professional geek Gary Whitta is set to write the screenplay. Also involved is Martin Whist as prduction designer; h'es worked on such films as Cloverfield, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Event, and others.


COWBOY BEBOP – Like Akira, this film is probably happening in large part due to a certain actor's involvement. In this case, though, he's set to star: Keanu Reeves will play Spike Spiegel. Peter Craig, who has more films in production at the moment than completed, will write the screenplay. No one has been set to direct, but Erwin Stoff, of I Am Legend, A Scanner Darkly, and Constantine will produce, along with Kenji Uchida and Shinichirou Watanabe, from Sunrise.



DEATH NOTE – Brothers Charley and Vlas Parlapanides are set to write the screenplay; Vlas also wrote the 2000 film Everything for a Reason and the War of Gods film. Executive producers are Doug Davison and Roy Lee (The Uninvited, The Grudge, The Ring). No cast or director announcements...yet.
To be exact the movie is not based on the Manga - instead its a Remake of the Japanese Live Action Movies of Death Note.


DRAGONBALL 2: REBORN - Confirmed - sadly. But we can safely assume that all the cast from Dragonball Evolution will be back, particularly James Marsters as Piccolo. Rumor has it the film will feature the Raditz arc, in which Piccolo and Goku team up against the evil Saiyan.


GHOST IN THE SHELL – A 3DCG take, also probably based more on the anime film than Shirow Masamune's manga, though we don't know for sure. It's a DreamWorks pic, produced by Ari and Avi Arad (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc, many other superhero flicks). Jamie Moss, writer of 2008's Street Kings, will write the script.


GIGANTOR – It's hard to call this technically a "Hollywood" film, since Imagi is based on Hong Kong, but their Astro Boy Movie is definitely making enough of a splash that I wouldn't exclude them. They've got a 2011 film based on Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Gigantor manga (also known as Tetsujin-28) in the works, to be produced by Felix Ip and Francis Kao, who obviously both worked on Astro Boy as well as the 2007 film TMNT. No scriptwriter has been announced yet.


NINJA SCROLL – Another Leonardo DiCaprio/Appian Way project, Alex Tse-- writer of the Watchmen screenplay –is going to write Ninja Scroll's as well. Interestingly, the exec-producer on the project is Jungo Maruta, who was executive producer for Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Last Order: Final Fantasy VII. Oh, and both RideBack and Kemonozume. So I guess we won't have to worry about the film not appealing to its geek history!


CASTLEVANIA - Yeah...confirmed. Produced by Paul W.S Anderson - who we all love as Producer/Director/Writer for the Resident Evil Movies, Aliens vs. Predator Movies, Dead Or Alive Movie, Death Race and our all time favourite movie of all time - 1995's Mortal Kombat. Other than that, there is not much info about this movie.
Paul W.S. Anderson was attached to direct this film but gave it up to the original director Sylvain White to direct Death Race   instead. James Wan then took over after the movie was first considered "dead" and Anderson stayed on as producer.


RESIDENT EVIL 5 - While this isnt an Anime movie nor will it be released 2011 - the Mid-credit Sequence in 'Resident Evil 4: Afterlife' basically shows the fact that they are already working on the 5th Movie. Like Resident Evil / Resident Evil Apocalypse.
I just put this here as a side note.


So that's seven films. Even if only half of them actually happen in 2011, that's still quite a bit of Hollywood Otakuism for the anime world.


Which one(s) are you excited about? Or where you already doing suicide reading Hollywood and Otaku in one sentence?

[TheGameNinja]

I'm only going to discuss the one's I have opinions on.

I have serious hope for Cowboy Bebop. I'm not sure how I feel about Keanu playing Spike, but he's pretty much the person responsible for getting the film into actual production. The script is where my hope comes from. Watanabe and the folks at Sunrise have absolute final say on everything that they're doing with this film. They are not going to allow this to be half-assed.

Death Note... I dunno. I really like the Japanese live action films. The first two anyway. If America can pull off something similar, while still being different from both the original AND the Japanese films, they might just manage to do it. Also, there were rumors going around that Zac Effron had been cast as Light. Those were lies. There was also a fake script floating around online, so just don't put much faith in any rumors you hear about this one online.

Dragonball 2: Reborn... really? I hadn't heard about that. I had heard that there would be another film, but it would be a restart. Oh well. To be honest, I don't dislike most of the cast of the first one. It was mostly the direction, the script... pretty much everything else that failed. I don't know. I HOPE it succeeds where the first failed. I really do. Dragonball deserves it and it CAN be done. Regardless, the first one is going to be a cult classic in a few years. It's a movie you can have parties all about watching and riffing on it.You love to hate it, as the saying goes.

I think Ghost in the Shell probably has a good shot at being a genuinely good film. Spielberg's got his hands in it, so we know it will at least have the budget and resources it deserves.

And that's about it... also, anyone think we'll EVER see that live action Evangelion movie? XD

[Hakudamashi]

This is a definite "hooray"

[Ioshyriku]

hooray
and a castlevania movie? OMG I can't wait