Jordan Vogt-Roberts To Direct Live-Action ‘Gundam’ Film For Netflix Written By Brian K. Vaughan. Credit: UTA
‘The Kings of Summer’ & ‘Kong: Skull Island’ director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has been tapped to direct and produce Legendary’s first-ever live-action feature film version of Sunrise’s beloved anime ‘Gundam’ for Netflix the streaming service has announced.
For those of you out of the loop as to what ‘Gundam’ is, the hugely popular mecha anime launched in 1979, and is a hard-sci-fi space opera, which focused as much on the characters as the mecha. What sets it apart from other giant battling robot anime is its realistic portrayal of war and conflict, treating the mecha more as weapons of war than good or evil entities in themselves (like Transformers). If you want to know more, check out the video below from our very own Bex from TristaBytes.
The story for the live-action film version of ‘Gundam’ is being kept under wraps but 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 Gundam universe is replete with numerous storylines of love and conflict along with the popular Gundam battles, in which the characters operate robot suits called Mobile Suits.
The multi-billion-dollar property 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 Bandai Namco’s earnings almost forty years after its inception.
Brian K. Vaughan is penning the script, as well as executive producing the project with Cale Boyter overseeing on behalf of Legendary with the Sunrise creative team. Vaughan is the amazing comic book writer behind titles such as ‘Y: The Last Man’, ‘Runaways’, ‘Paper Girls’, and the epic ‘Saga’. He also wrote on tv series such as ‘Lost’, and was writer, EP and showrunner for ‘Under the Dome’.
There is no release date yet for ‘Gundam’ or casting, but we’ll let you know when we hear more.
