Y: The Last Man and Marvel’s Runaways creator Brian K Vaughn is busy and getting busier. It’s just been announced that he’s been tapped to write the screenplay for a live-action film based on the iconic Japanese Manga/Anime/toyline Gundam. We have no information on the new film beyond that. We know it is live action, but we have to assume that much of the robot action will be CGI. We can only hope, however, that they take more of a cue from Pacific Rim and not from Pacific Rim 2.
It will be interesting to see where the film falls on Vaughn’s priority list as he’s already been attached to write scripts or treatments for movies based on Marvel’s Silver Surfer as well as 80’s toy franchises MASK and Visionaries. Also, we can’t forget the adaptation of Y: The Last Man that is preparing to head into production at FX shortly.
Here’s the original press release from last year:
Legendary and Sunrise announced today at Anime Expo 2018, plans to co-produce the first-ever live-action feature film version of GUNDAM, based on Sunrise’s massively popular Mecha anime and science fiction media franchise. The billion dollar property was created in 1979 and has spawned a multi-platform universe encompassing televised anime, manga, animated films, video games, plastic models, toys, and novels among other media. Gundam continues to dominate master toy licensee Bandai Namco’s earnings almost forty years after its inception.
The original Gundam series is set in the Universal Century, an era in which humanity’s growing population has led people to emigrate to space colonies. Eventually, the people living in the colonies seek their autonomy, and launch a war of independence against the people living on Earth. Through the tragedies and discord arising from this human conflict, not only the maturation of the main character, but also the intentions of enemies and the surrounding people are sensitively depicted. The battles in the story, in which the characters pilot robots known as mobile suits, are wildly popular.
The story for the live-action version of Gundam is being kept under wraps.
The project will be overseen by Cale Boyter on behalf of Legendary with the Sunrise creative team.