Sometime in the future, Netflix will become Mech-flix as the Gundam fleet becomes physical and lands its metal 100-ton feet on the platform. The streamer revealed today it’s looking into creating a live-action movie set in the Gundam universe.
Gundam was introduced in 1979 with the “Mobile Suit” series, which would become one of the most influential shows of anime’s formative years. It spawned a truckload of spinoffs and sequels, as well as countless imitators, and is singlehandedly responsible for “giant robots” being the thing Westerners associated anime with in the 90s and early 2000s.
Chinese studio Legendary has been tapped to create the live-action adaption, and they in turn have recruited Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island) to direct the film, and Brian K. Vaughan (Saga, Y: The Last Man) to write it. (Incidentally, Vaughan has been trying for a long time to adapt Y: The Last Man into live-action form, and word on the street is it’s finally happening soon.)
This is far from the first anime-to-live-action project Netflix has taken on…apparently they will not rest until we’ve seen every popular Japanese cartoon character made into flesh. They’ve been working on a Cowboy Bebop live-action series for a while now and wrapped up filming last month, so we could be seeing it very soon. They produced a live-action take on Death Note that wasn’t well received, and if they actually get around to making that live-action One Piece they were talking about last year, it’ll be even less beloved.
Weirder still is their habit of taking other properties that AREN’T anime and turning them INTO anime….video games like Castlevania or Tomb Raider, or the anime version of Pacific Rim that premiered on the streamer earlier this year. Maybe the motive is to convert them into anime so they can reverse-engineer them into live-action adaptions of that anime later.
The live-action Gundam movie has no specific title or release window announced as of yet.
