Sony Secures Rights To Robotech For Live-Action Feature Film

Anime fans should be thrilled to hear that Sony has picked up the movie rights to the popular anime series Robotech. Robotech has been around for decades and back in the 80s the cartoon was popular enough to have toys available here in the US based on it. Sony hopes to move into production with a feature film based on the anime series quickly.

The live-action feature film has producers Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton attached Canton was a producer on "300" and "The Immortals." Michael Gordon, who also wrote "300" and "GI Joe," will write the script for the film.

The writer gives me a bit of pause; "GI Joe" was a rather bad movie while "300" is one of my very favorite films. Robotech focuses on humanity creating robot technology that is sort of like Transformers, only humans pilot the robotic machines in this franchise.

Sony believes that the franchise has enough global appeal to become a blockbuster property. That means that we can likely expect at least a three-film franchise. The rights to film for the franchise were originally with Warner Bros, but never moved into production. At one point, names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire had shown interest according to reports.

SOURCE: Variety