Legendary Pictures Working on a Gundam Movie with Sunrise

Legendary Pictures has brought to screen movies like Pacific Rim and Godzilla, and news has it that they're working on a movie based on one of the granddaddies of giant-robot fighting—Gundam.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the announcement was made last Thursday at Anime Expo 2018. Legendary is teaming up with Sunrise Animation with Cale Boyter working with Sunrise's creative team. As of now, no director, writer or actors have been announced, but hopefully we get some more updates along the way.

Seeing that Legendary is collaborating with Sunrise, I hope that we will be getting some Hollywood-quality special effects with the Gundam movie. No offense to Japan, but the live-action adaptations of Bleach, Attack on Titan, and Rurouni Kenshin could have done with some more polishing. With a franchise like Gundam, you know that they need a decent special effects budget to pull it off.

Here I am just hoping that there won't be any controversy when the film suddenly starts kicking things into production. Ghost in the Shell was met with so much backlash after Scarlett Johansson was cast as a robot, but hopefully Legendary has the hindsight to cast the right people for the film.

If you ask me, I think the best direction would be to spinoff on their own story and not base anything on the anime. Though I would love to see a live-action Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, I think casting issues alone would hurt the film. Best they make their own branch of story apart from the main war between the Earth Federation and Zeon--just like Gundam: Thunderbolt.

No release date has been announced for the live-action Gundam movie.

See Also: Watch the Realtime Transformation of Japan's Gundam Statue