Pictures are worth a thousand words, so we’re going to start with a picture of the universe. Planets and stars. Cats and dogs. That’s what the guys from the Yorozuka will be discussing with their special guest today.
Gin: Wait a minute. The one on the right isn’t the universe. Isn’t that Tsura?
Kagura: It’s the dark side of the universe aru.
Gin: Moving on, today, we have a special guest with us to discuss the latest episode of Gintama. He’s also going to show us how to go Bankai. Right, Kurosaki-san?
Guest: ….
Shinpachi: I’ve been trying to tell you for the last hour. Kurosaki-san is in the middle of filming some very important action scenes, so his manager phoned and said he couldn’t come.
Kagura: What! Gin-chan, I want a manager too aru.
Gin: Listen, Kagura, what would you rather have: a manager or a plate of sushi? They’re expensive, you know.
Kagura: You’re right. You can’t eat them can you? I want some ramen too aru.
One man stands in the Evil Organisation’s path to World Domination: Sunred. But don’t worry Evil General Vamp, because soon, Monster Birdman’s claws will be stained with Sunred’s blood.
Yes, don’t worry General Vamp. Your supporters may sound like dying old men, you may wear a long sleeve purple nightgown, and you can easily win a vote from me for Bushiest Eyebrows in Anime (I’m sorry, fuzzy-brow Lee; I’m sorry, nori-brow Amarao), but don’t worry, you’re in a Super Sentai parody, so at least you won’t be surrounded by angst. Listen, can you cross over to Vampire Knight the Second and kidnap Zero for me? Maybe lend him your moustache? It will look good on him. Pretty please?
The Variety entertainment news source reports that New Regency, a production company based at Fox, no longer has plans for the live-action Voltron film project, while another company, Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media, is negotiating to pick up the project. If Relativity Media signs onto the remake of the 1980s animated robot series, it will finance and produce the film with a lower budget and the use of technologies similar to those used in Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 comic. Relativity Media produced or co-produced over fifty projects in the last three years, including Ghost Rider, The Forbidden Kingdom, and Wanted.
Variety reported in April of 2007 that New Regency was negotiating for the rights to the project from the Mark Gordon Company, which is still involved with producers Mark Gordon and Jordan Wynn. The newspaper now reports that New Regency never completed the deal and could not reach an agreement with Voltron’s Japanese rights holders. These talks began before the live-action Transformers film earned the fifth highest worldwide box office take of 2007, and before Warner Brothers began negotiating for the rights to another American adaptation of Japanese robots, Robotech.
If the Voltron project still goes forward, executive producer Bryan Zuriff and the other staffers will select a director by next week. Justin Marks (He-Man, Green Arrow) already wrote a script that resets the Lion Voltron story, which was based on the King of Beasts Golion anime, in post-apocalyptic New York City and Mexico after an alien invasion.
The IFMagazine.com entertainment website reports that film producer Erwin Stoff (The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly) is developing a live-action adaptation of Sunrise’s Cowboy Bebop multi-genre action anime series for Fox. Stoff told the website that the project is “in the really early stages” since the parties “just signed it the other day.” Shinichiro Watanabe’s original anime follows the motley crew of the spaceship Bebop as it travels throughout the solar system in search of the next job. Stoff promised “a real degree of faithfulness,” and added, “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A Scanner Darkly, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”
The anime distributor Bandai Entertainment and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block released the original 1998 television series in the United States, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the subsequent 2001 animated movie. The anime was also adapted into two separate manga series, and Tokyopop released both manga series in North America. A Bandai Entertainment representative was unable to publicly comment on this report.
