Tuesday, February 26, 2008

AstroBoy Movie [updates]


AstroBoy holds a special meaning for all anime (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) fanatics. Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga masterpiece is going to face the modern audience under the direction of David Bowers, known for his projects Shark Tale, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Flushed Away among others. Bowers confesses to being a long-time AstroBoy fan. Bowers commented:

"I’ve had a lifelong affection for the original AstroBoy, so am looking forward to giving him the full action-adventure Hollywood treatment. His story is both emotional and spectacular, so it absolutely lends itself to the big screen. With the amazing crew that Imagi has assembled, I feel there’s an opportunity to create something very special – a film to surprise audiences, have them on the edge of their seats, and hopefully make them laugh, too.”

Astro Boy, the iconic character created by the “god of manga”, Japan’s Osamu Tezuka, has enjoyed great acclaim and success around the world as the hero of an animated television series which originally aired in the 1960s, with subsequent versions delighting new generations of fans.

Set in futuristic Metro City, Astro Boy is about a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist to replace the son he has lost. Unable to fulfill the grieving father’s expectations, our hero embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators, before he returns to save Metro City and reconcile with the man who had rejected him.

David Bowers (Flushed Away) is the director of AstroBoy, slated for worldwide release in 2009.

AstroBoy the movie will be released on 2009 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Weinstein Company.

Monday, February 25, 2008

New Astroboy Movie Announced!

An Astroboy movie is in production. After years of rumors and speculation, Astro will finally be coming to us on the big screen. The movie, announced earlier this month, is being produced by Imagi studios, the same studio who brought us TMNT earlier in the year. The movie, like TMNT, is expected to be a full CGI animation, though we will have to wait until 2009 for its release.

The Director for the movie will be David Bowers part of the team who create the movie "A Shark's Tale", and also directed the animation "Flush Away".

For now, all we have to do is to wait for the movie to come out mid-2009. :)

Astro Boy


Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム Tetsuwan Atomu, lit. "Mighty Atom") is a television series first broadcast in Japan from 1963 to 1966. The story follows the adventures of a robot boy and a selection of other characters along the way.

Astro Boy is the first Japanese television series that embodied the aesthetic that later became familiarized as anime.[verification needed] It originated as a manga in 1952 by Osamu Tezuka, who is often reputed as the "god of manga".[1] After enjoying success abroad, Astro Boy was remade in the 1980s as Shin Tetsuwan Atomu, known as Astroboy in the United States and other Western countries, and again in 2003. For a time, Astro Boy enjoyed a level of popularity in Japan equivalent to Disney's image character Mickey Mouse.