Live-Action Anime Movies.
Every anime fan's favorite four words from.
From classics like Dragonball Evolution, Death Note, The Guyver, Ghost in the Shell, and the Fist of the North Star?
"Don't turn your back on me!"
"You're already dead."
There are some decent to good live-action adaptations like Speed Racer,
Battle Angel Alita, and Edge of Tomorrow.
Honestly the best one so far if you ask
me
...and no one has asked me.
Most of the live-action anime movies have been disappointing to say the least
but in this video we are not gonna be talking about the movies that got made.
No
I'm here to talk about the most famous anime live-action movies that have never...
...seen the light of day
and maybe
for the better.
first let's get some things out of the
way right now:
while it can be easy to poke fun,
adapting serial franchises into
two hour movies is hard,
even with the best intentions and under the best circumstances.
I don't want to spend this video mocking these attempts
well maybe...maybe a little...
but rather look at how
the decisions are made by creative
people when there's so much money at stake.
That being said, this s*ht is pretty wild. Let's get to it.
An obvious starting point for Hollywood adaptations of anime franchises
would be in the mecha subcategory of anime.
After all, Hollywood likes nothing more than making big robots explode good, good movies.
Just ask Michael Bay and the absolutely
mind-boggling amount of money he has made
making six transformer movies.
I didn't even know there were six.
and a lot of that box-office revenue came from overseas markets,
so a franchise that would have already have a lot of brand name recognition in Asia
seems like a no-brainer,
right...
right?
The first attempt to do this started way before Michael Bay
was the beloved household name
arsonist he is now.
in 1983 Bandai was under new
management,
and started courting Hollywood to adapt it's now massively popular Gundam franchise.
Gundams are largely unknown in America at the time,
so Bandai approach the relatively independent film studio Lions Gate
which is now defunct and not to be confused with Lionsgate
you know, which wasn't
even founded until 1997.
It's even more interesting to
know that all the early development
material suggests that the mobile suits
themselves were planned to be entirely
CGI creations. This was the mid 1980s CGI
of that length and scale?
That was a big deal
Visual effects just didn't work
that way back then,
still being primarily dependent on miniatures and models to sell the idea of intergalactic combat.
In fact, pretty much the only movie that had
convincingly pulled off a complete
computer-generated spaceship was The
Last Starfighter.
So Lion's Gate got The Last Starfighter effects team to sign on.
Also attached were famous futurist designer
Syd Mead, of Blade Runner Fame,
and an unknown writer / director named
Chip Prosser.
Chip actually managed to complete a full draft of his Gundam movie in November of 1983,
but it just wasn't meant to be:
Bandai hadn't acquired all the rights
necessary to give it full green light,
and the project was shelved.
So now you might be asking: What would a 1983 live-action American Gundam movie look like though?
first and foremost the Gundams themselves were massive,
like between five to ten times bigger than the 50-foot Gundams of the anime
Instead of having very practical fighter jet like cockpits,
they had something more akin to
what you see in G-Gundam
a show which wouldn't come out until 11 years after the script
where the Gundams mimic the real pilots movements.
Almost all of the characters names and relationships are changed,
so the end results ended up reading something more akin to Star Wars movie,
with occasional mentions of actual
space politics.
Some of the examples is a Moreau is now Amaru
and his 13 year old brother Char, who is now named Shah,
is jealous of how much Amaru relates to their renaissance man
genius science father Tim Ray.
It's nice name Tim Ray.
In addition to inventing the mobile
suits, Tim Rey is also a legend in every
corner of the universe and has created
an out of control AI named Ziong.
Ziong is pretending to be a man and he runs the Ziong Corporate Empire
the primary antagonist of the movie.
Tellingly, also undoubtedly an import from Star Wars,
"Earth" is never mentioned in the script
it's all whiz-bang space fantasy in the far, far off realm
Sha is also brainwashed by the evil empire,
Amaru is stranded on a foreign world with a composite character love-interest named Sara,
and they begin contracting mercenaries to help them get off this rock
and fight the good fight, Seven Samurai-style.
They also attend the jetpack baseball game and eat "space dog".
Which is... just a lot.
There's a lot to take in.
the rest of the movies a feel-good adventure Romp
about how war is bad and robots fighting in space is awesome.
It all wraps up with a peacetime
statue of the Gundams being built as a
reminder of how bad war is even if those
fighting robots are super dope.
this plot is literally that one meme image of
the Gundam shooting and then the kids just like,
"Wow, cool robot!" and then "War is bad."
goes over their heads.
It's literally that.
Editor pull that up. Show the kids
what it's about.
It does make one wonder how Gundams
legacy in America would have been altered
if this movie had come to pass.
Gundam fever didn't truly catch on in the States
until Toonami began airing Gundam
Wing as part of his programming block in 2000.
Would Chip Proser's Gundam been remembered fondly like The Last Starfighter,
or as an unfortunate early misfire like that Captain American movie?
"Captain,
are you okay?"
"Hold It!"
"Don't leave me out here!"
Yikes!
Regardless, Gundam is now in the hands of Legendary Pictures:
the guys who actually went ahead and made the Pacific Rim movie.
Comic book author Brian Kalon
is penning
and considering his track record in print and television,
his credits include the episodes of Lost as well as Y: The Last Man and Saga,
it might finally be the Gundam adaptation we deserve.
Just in time for the series to turn 40.
Okay boomer.
Actually, that's a joke. 40's not boomer age.
Edit that out! Edit that out, that's bad!
Gundam was far from the only mecha franchise that was eyed by Hollywood though.
In 2007 the Frankenstein monster of a
constructed mashup anime Robotech
was acquired by Warner Brothers for
live-action adaptation,
set to be produced by and star none other than Tobey Maguire.
Yeah! That's what he's been!
Goddamn... Robot Time...
Though everyone seems sincerely excited for the project,
it never moved for by Warner Brothers
which might be a good thing
because according to the press releases, WB had plans for the property to be
"an science fiction franchise la Paramount's hit Transformers"
so if you've ever wondered Michael Bay's transformers but starring OG Spider-Man,
I mean sorry to break it to you like this,  but uh...
it's just not...
...it's just not happening.
Eventually, the rights lapsed and as of 2015, Sony Pictures snatched it up.
The last anyone's heard they got screenwriter
Michael Gordon to pen it, his big claim
to fame being 300 and
♪ GI Joe♫
Rise of Cobra
Also, this time around, the
studio claims that the reworked property
"has an 'Independence Day' meets 'Star Wars' vibe.
That's a whole lot of vibes going on, whole lot of vibes.
Okay, so from the people that brought us
the props, monsters and basically the visuals of the Lord of the Rings world,
WETA workshops actually create a concept art for an Evangelion live-action movie'
Yeah
WETA x EVA
Let me tell you, my timeline video would have been insane if this was actually made
and you know what for this bit
I'm gonna have someone else
read out this whole mess.
Well Hello. It me, Dory from Get in the Robot.
Subscribe to us after you watch this.
Alright, let's get into it.
The year was 2004 and apparently
Hideaki Anno wanted Emma Watson to play Asuka. I'm not even making this up.
WETA apparently worked pretty seriously on the project for a few years, but moved on to other projects.
Also, Emma Watson is like, 30 now so hey, she could play Misato
or Susan Whitnall according to the WETA artwork, mmm
You remember that great character Kate
Rose, right?
Kate Rose
Kate Rose
no
Thank you, Dory from Get in the Robot
Now, what about all the anime adaptations that don't involve teen pilots and Giant Robots?
Yeah like...
Where's Keanu Reeves at?
I keep saying John Wick is a real-life action anime movie.
but I think other than that, might have something to do with the next title
I'm gonna be talking about:
A little title known as:
And it turns out they already adapted
Akira in 2012,
it's called Chronicle
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This history of Akira in the Hollywood is long and troubled and weird as hell.
Since warner brothers acquired the film rights for it in 2002,
the project has been through some ...
c-c-c-hanges
They went through five major directors and ten different screenwriters.
Right out the gate it was gonna be filmed by Stephen Norrington, of Blade fame,
who was then fired from the project when in 2003
he unleashed his vision of a different beloved comic book franchise:
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Yikes. RIP to that uhhhh...
"franchise".
The closest the project ever got to actually getting off the ground
was with Jaume Collet-Sera, of House of Wax Fame, directing in 2012
but it was pulled only a few months before productions began.
Apparently director Collet-Sera Serra was
coming off of two movies in a three year work binge.
He couldn't get the budget below around 90 million, so he stepped away from the project
to have a well deserved break.
There was aslo a version with Leonardo DiCaprio producing and ambiguously set to star,
in which, Kaneda would have been the owner of a bar in Manhattan,
which was sold to Japan during an economic recession,
and has to track down his brother Tetsuo after the government kidnaps him
to experiment with his mind powers.
huh?
Also it may-or-may-not have been planned to be a trilogy so as to more closely follow the manga
There are conflicting reports on that and it's all you know very confusing,
as that plot synopsis sounds very different from any version of Akira probably illustrates.
George Miller director of Mad Max franchise was also attached at one point,
Jordan Peele of MADTV and Get Out Fame turned it down,
Justin Lin of Fast & Furious almost
got it,
and finally the project seems to have fallen into the lap of
What We do in The Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok, director,
Taika Waititi.
Now the project was scheduled to be shot
once Waititi wraps Thor love and thunder for Marvel,
but just recently Warner has removed the Akira movie on their release slate.
So looks like fans will have to wait up
no longer until Kanada or Jeff, I guess
to ride his classic red bike.
So you might be asking who was considered to star in Akira
over its almost 20 years in development hell?
Nobody big, you know, really just uh...
you, know Andrew Garfield, Michael Fassbender, Helena Bonham Carter,
Robert Pattinson, Kirsten Stewart, Chris Pine,
Garett Hedlund, Joaquin Pheonix, Garett Hedlund, Joaquin Pheonix, Paul Dano, Gary Oldman
Keira Knightley and Justin Timbe-
Justin Timberlake?!
And my favorite baba-yaga
Keanu Reeves
We all love Keanu here as the rest of the world currently does as well.
Audience member "You're breathtaking!"
Keanu "You're breathtaking!"
"You're all breathtaking!"
The world loves him so much that
Akira isn't the only
genre defining masterwork that he's been attached to the adaption of.
In 2008, and you probably remember this, news leaked that Fox has acquired the rights
to the mind-numbingly beloved fan favorite
franchise
"Okay 3,2,1 lets jam!"
*Hums Theme Song*
Cowboy Bebop
*Hums Theme Song*
Cowboy Bebop
Screenwriter Peter Craig, known for The Town and Hunger Games Mocking Jay movies
was attached to the project and apparently completed a script, though it's never surfaced.
Bebop was also set to star none other than your favorite Christ-Metaphor
and Fictional Hitman, and Immortal Man, Keanu Reeves,
and it lit the old internet on fire.
Also, must remind you all of this great
Photoshop that was created.
Fun fact: Craig and Reeves met in person with Watanabe and apparently
the famed creator of Cowboy Bebop was very excited and on board for this version of the film
that was never made.
The only other info that ever seemed to surface about the project with Reeves starring
was that the budget supposedly,
and I'm quoting here, bold letters
"INSANE".
Rumors are that it was hovering around
Five hundred million dollars
and they couldn't get it down anymore
Eventually it was decided that the
budget was too inflated
and things just kind of fell apart.
As of right now Netflix currently has its live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop
in production, starring none other than John Cho.
But unfortunately, in early October, Cho was
injured during a freak set accident
and the production has been put on hold for eight or nine months while he recovers.
Hope you get well soon.
Space Cowboy
*Bang*
Seriously though, even when things aren't in things aren't in production hell
something seems to go wrong goddamn
making live-action anime is hard.
Also, since 2017 Netflix has also, while quietly
been developing a live-action series
adaptation of the incredibly
long-running manga slash anime
juggernaut:
*Mimics One Piece Theme Song*
which is to be supervised by the guy who
did Prison Break.
Okay...
There was a treasure-hunt subplot
in that show too, right?
I can't even front. This one actually threw me off guard.
Da F*ck are they thinking?
VO: So hold up real quick:
After we filmed this video essay a little bit ago,
I found out that Netflix had officially
announced that they are indeed working
on this adaptation.
On their Twitter page, they announced that
Oda Sensei, himself, will be overseeing this project as an Executive Producer
and the showrunner is Steven Madea, who has produced and written episodes of
CSI Miami, Lost, Miami Medical and so much more.
I thought that'd be more miami-based shows but those are the only two, by the way.
Yeah, I guess I really shouldn't have
added One Piece on this list 'cause now, it
it's it's not failed. It's happening.
Goodness.
One more that I like to mention
just because it doesn't really fit
anywhere else
is that apparently someone wants to make a Naruto live-action movie,
and that someone just Lionsgate.
The one one that you know this time, the one-
Lionsgate not
Lions Gate, Lionsgate.
Yeah
And they wanted to be directed by the guy who did The Greatest Showmen
Michael Gracey
The movie also stars Hugh Jackman.
So now I'm just imagining Hugh Jackman playing Asuma Sensei.
And its honestly not that bad.
Surprisingly, this isn't actually the first Lionsgate foray into this.
Turns out that French horror auteur Alex
Aja, who you probably know from
The Hills of Eyes remakes, Horns and most
recently Crawl,
had long wanted to make a Space Adventure Cobra for them.
And this wasn't just like a work-for-hire thing,
this was apparently Aja's passion
project which makes sense 'cause
Cobra was a massive hit in France.
So much that even Luke Besson wanted to direct the Cobra live-action.
Rajah revealed, in the 2018 interview, that what sunk the project was it's inflated budget
which was up to a projected 130 million dollars by the time this thing got shut down
and surprisingly Guardians of the Galaxy which, Aja claim was too similar
to what he planned to do, and beat them to the punch.
Don't you Aja-Heads worry about it, though.
The F**k is an Aja Head?
Do they call themselves "Aja-Heads"
Do Aja fans call themselves Aja-Heads?
Comment down below
if you call yourself an Aja-Head.
The horror auteur will be making his dive into anime and manga
adaptations when he turns Junji Ito's iconic horror manga Tomie a into a series next year.
Never one to be left out of a potential money-making grift,
corporate juggernaut Mouse and the Future
Overlords, Disney tried not only once
but twice to turn Star Blazers - the American
adaptation of anime Space Battleship Yamato
We even had the script of the version they were working on in the mid-90s,
from the oscar-nominated screenwriter Tab Murphy
the man who wrote Disney's Tarzan and Alantis: The lost Empire.
Shout out to Atlantis, though.
Just like the Gundam script from '83 the script for Star Blazers
unsurprisingly borrows heavily
from the original Star Wars trilogy
in terms both of tone and changes.
It even opens with a tech scroll and tilts down
to a spaceship the script is essentially
a retelling of the first season of the anime
with most of the characters names
changed and the spaceship now being a
refitted and tricked out version of the
real-life American battleship the USS Arizona
which was actually famously sunk
during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
I'm not even gonna say, I'm just gonna... I'm
just gonna leave it there.
That's just weird, though.
honestly it was basically just the Star Wars ripoff,
with liberal helpings of Top Gun and independence Day to spice things up.
The project was scrapped in the late 90's.
Disney announced, in 2006, that they were gonna try again, but nothing ever came of the project.
So um...RIP, I guess of
Space Battleship USS Arizona.
And speaking of 'too insane to be true', I
think we all need to come to terms with
the fact that we came this close to
having Sailor Moon be a Disney Princess
and a live-action one no less.
In 1997, pre-production was underway for a live-action adaptation
produced by and starring Geena Davis as Queen Beryl.
Unfortunately things fell through in
1998 when the DiC,
company that Disney had acquired - lost the rights to the show,
dashing our dreams of seeing Geena Davis in a magical girl film forever.
Unless you count The Fly
and somehow considered it 90-minute of the most messed up transformation montage ever.
"In the name of the fly! I am ...F**k up looking Jeff...Jeff Goldbloom!"
Speaking of body horror, it's also worth
mentioning that we nearly had a
Hollywood version of one of my favorite mangas, Parasyte, as well.
Apparently New Line Cinema, of Lord of the Rings Fame, optioned for the rights to the manga in 2005,
and even had involvement from the Jim Henson Company,
which would have been amazing... I think.
Now unfortunately, the rights expired in 2013, prompting a bidding war in Japan,
leading to the aforementioned anime which was a fantastic adaptation,
as well as to Japanese live-action feature films in 2014 and 2015 respectively
There's barely and information on this Hollywood adaptation out there,
so the project probably didn't get very far into development,
but for my money? It might have been one of the most successful ones.
Think about it 2005! Jared Padalecki or some other person
running around and screaming at their
Jim Hanson designed Migi puppet hand
and then Big Bird popping out or some sh*t.
Incredible
10 out of 10
Watch that non-existent movie.
Now that we've run down so, so many famous anime
that are stuck in various stages of
development hell,
many of which that will never see the light of day,
we come back to the age-old and obvious question:
WHY?
Why are so many of the live-action anime
adaptations
that do get released in America really not that good?
While doing research for this, and this is just my opinion here,
there are a couple of really difficult questions that really
have no easy or good solutions.
First reason is casting.
Just imagine right here: you and me
You're some movie maker making maker guy
and you're in charge of turning this popular but niche cartoon series.
So... what do you do?
Well the easiest route is you get famous actors of course!
Get the big names so that even
if people don't know Inuyasha.
You know, they'll know Michael Cera who'll be playing Inuyasha ...
I'm kidding...
hopefully...
But yeah you see them you see the problem here right?
Many of these properties take place in Japan or a feature of Japanese characters
and/or just have a lot of Japanese cultural
things
Which leads to the question of: do you make the characters American?
Which characters do you make American?
Does anyone really want to see Tobey Maguire playing Hikaru Ichijyo?
Or like "Harry Iceman"? Or whatever they have to rename him?
By doing this you're gonna split things hard.
On one hand, sure, you famous actors like Scarlett Johansson in your movie,
and on the other hand, you've just alienated your core audience of people
who actually know the material and will feel strange and maybe a little pissed off
that you're trying to pass off one of
the most European ass sounding and looking person
as a character who was originally
named Motoko Kusanagi.
Also that movie's plot twist...
And that's not even getting into the cultural import
and baggage attached to each story,
some of which just doesn't really have an American analogue.
Like, let's just look at you know Akira for a second because
there's a lot of info on this one and
it's pretty good case study of how this work,
what about the fact that the storyline is kicked off by a massive explosion in Tokyo?
This is obviously a historical nod to the very real nuclear attacks
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So what is the historical American equivalent of getting two of your cities nuked?
None of the screenwriters seem to be able to totally crack this,
but a lot of the suggestions, unsurprisingly hinged on 9/11-style terrorist attacks in New York,
because it's kind of the closest thing Americans have in American history.
Also remember: this project started in 2002 and has been through no less than
15 different professional director producers and screenwriters.
Seems like they haven't cracked the code yet.
Which brings us back to properties then maybe don't have all the cultural and racial
"screenwriting problems" that the others
do,
but, you're still stuck with an astronomical budget
to try and make us believe that Keanu Reeves is a space cowboy.
A lot of the times, what seems
like a good idea first to a studio,
might end up just sounding like a very
expensive gamble
for a property that might just critically box-office wise bomb.
Why go through all that when you can make, I don't know...
a Boss Baby sequel.
Who knows, though? I for one will be clicking over to Netflix
the day that Cowboy Bebop with John Cho drops,
because you know, even though most of these movies are hot garage,
every once in a while we very once in a while we get a movie like, you know,
The Ring where all the things just kind of line up and that adaptions can go smoothly.
Because honestly, Americans are scared of VHS tapes and ghost girls in, too.
Actually honestly, the the real horror now is:
Kids these days
Don't know what a VHS tape is!
All I can say is us Koreans have already made the best live-action manga adaptation
It's called: Oldboy
Oh god! Not not that one! God, God No!
There we go.
There we go...perfect
Thank you so much for watching,
I'm Tim Lew host of Crunchyroll.
and please if you like this video click the subscribe button
and check out our other videos that we have
and please comment down below what is your least favorite live-action anime adaptation
that you've watched recently or just
ever or if you want if you want to be positive
comment your favorite live-action adaptation mine is
I think it's got to be Edge of
Tomorrow or Oldboy.
Oldboy
Edge of Tomorrow,
Battle Angel
Even though, I do have to say Battle Angel they say
they say Panzer Kunst is a Zero G Gravity
fighting, if you've read the manga
you know that, it's a human that that developed a fighting style to fight robots,
which is much cooler in my opinion.
Oh, okay see you later now okay.
bye-bye
now.
you
