Astroboy News

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 1:32 pm

scifi.com wrote: 09:00am ET, 4-June-04

Tartakovsky Helms Astroboy

Sony Pictures Entertainment has struck a deal with animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Lab) to write and direct its long-in-development film version of the classic Japanese animated series Astroboy, Variety reported. Don Murphy of Angryfilms is producing, with Lisa Henson and Kristine Belson of Jim Henson Pictures, for Sony's Columbia Pictures, the trade paper reported.

The project was purchased by the studio in 1997 and slated as a live-action movie. Todd Alcott wrote a script and all systems were go, but the movie hit a snag in 2000, when Steven Spielberg began the similarly themed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, also about a robot boy who replaces a dead child.

Astroboy is a futuristic Pinocchio story about a scientist who builds a robot replacement for his dead son, but then turns him out in the world when it becomes clear he's not human, the trade paper reported.

Insiders told the trade paper that the movie will blend animation, animatronics and live action. Osamu Tezuka, often called the Walt Disney of Japan, created Astroboy.

angelx03 · Post by **angelx03** » Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:44 pm

Wow, what are the odds of an American working with the Japanese people in anime.

TaranT · Post by **TaranT** » Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:11 am

This one's not anime, it's live-action - mostly. And I wouldn't count on any Japanese people at all working on it.

I'm more worried about this movie becoming an American/Russian translation of a Tezuka story. It might turn out like Emmerich's Godzilla. And if Astro Girl looks like Blossom, I'm going to be seriously...errrrr, something.