Like many projects hoped for, some come and disappoint. Others, we are teased by and never come to fruition, and some we just endlessly, quietly hope for.
In my case, quiet hope just may pay off.
In late 2007 there was news that Tobey Maguire’s production company, Maguire Entertainment, was going to produce a live action version of Robotech after Warner Bros. got themselves the movie rights to the franchise. Back then, I just figured it was all hype.
Now the rumor is being updated with news that Lawrence Kasdan will be the writer for the Robotech project. Along with Kasdan, Frank Agrama and Jason Netter will be the executive producers. Tobey Maguire and Drew Crevello along with Akiva Goldsman and Chuck Roven will produce.
In case you don’t remember, Robotech was an epic cartoon from the 80′s that was a combination of three Japanese anime series. In it, Earth used giant robots that they developed from alien technology to defend Earth from the ensuing alien invasions.
When you talk giant robots, you’ve got a lot of different options out there. Obviously Power Rangers have taken the giant robot thing way beyond where it needed to go. Then you’ve got Voltron*, a bit like the previous noted heroes, but shaped like lions. Of course, there was Johnny Soko and his Giant Robot, and another favorite of mine in my youth, Jet Jaguar, who first appeared in Godzilla vs. Megalon. Ah, the memories.
With Transformers having come and gone to the silver screen we know the technology is there to create a very clean and satisfying rendition of these types of characters/machines in a movie. With Robotech the potential of joining the visual effects with the epic tale of its history gives us a myriad of possibilities. I reference “epic” because it was a fairly complicated and evolving storyline for a cartoon.
Do I have hope for the movie coming out and being entertaining? I do. Why? In the tiny chance you don’t recognize the writer’s name, some of his credits include the screenplays for a few other small flicks like Return of the Jedi, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I’m thinkin’ this might be a pretty interesting product when it comes out.
Anyone else agree? (This is where you’re supposed to say yes!)
*BTW: Voltron rumors from August 2007 say the Mark Gordon Company may adapt the multi-lion ‘bot’ into a movie.
Source: Hollywood Reporter, FirstShowing.net
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Kasdan is one of the reasons Lucas’ ideas got as far as they did.
Oh, how I wish he had written Indy IV.
That said, I have great respect for his work and hope it bodes well for the new movie.
Yes Jerseycajun, so do I!
I think this movie could easily spawn an ongoing movie franchise, With Tobey in it and 1-2 other big-name actors (Zac Efron for the main kid character to bring the entire world’s population under 14 into the theatres, heh)
My only concern would be budget…would they get big money comparable to Transformers to make it right?
This is the cartoon that i cried in when Lt Roy Focker died. It was also the first cartoon I saw that there was an interracial relationship, and interspecies relationship…before its time.
Having Frank Agrama on board gives me some hope that this will turn out better than Transformers did. At the very least, I’m sure he’ll do what he can to make sure the story remains true to the source.
This is one I am definitely looking forward to. Here’s hoping the team doesn’t disappoint.
So what do people want to see cannon or a rethink?
It should certainly be possible to reimagine the property so they aren’t just copying everything that’s been done before, while remaining true to what has been done before. If this writer is as good as people seem to believe he is, he should be able to pull it off, especially with the founder of the company that created Robotech on board.
Lessons learned from Transformers will no doubt make this superior…
“Lessons learned from Transformers will no doubt make this superior…”
Not like that’s going to be hard.
I’m as happy as you are with this news. However, I hope Maguire and his writers will not include the so-called second and third ‘seasons’ since they’re actually shows completely unrelated. I also wish they will explain the ‘protoculture’ the same way it was in Macross : not a new energy source, but the very first civilization (“culture”) common to humans and zentradies. This has a lot more depth and carries a lot more underpinnings than fighting – again – for energy : the zentradies have forgotten anything from their pasts, they’re all dedicated to war, have no engineering or technical skills except for waging wars, they rely on automated factories to build theur machines and when it fails, they cannot fix it. They’re so brainwashed into waging war that they’re paralyzed when hearing for the first time music.
I understand that it’s robotech’s rights that were bought, not Macross’, but I see no right infringement in scripting a real good story instead of the robotech story that was a dumbed down version of the original macross one.
I suspect they probably will just stick to the Macross portion of Robotech for at least the first movie, but I don’t see any reason why future installments shouldn’t or couldn’t draw from the other two portions of the series.
As for giving the movie more depth, I don’t see that they can’t stick to the basic Robotech story and still add in at least some of what you ask for while still leaving open the possibilities of the Robotech Masters and Invid storylines for later movies. If handled correctly, the Macross storyline could easily last three movies and set up a fourth based on the next set of episodes.
I think the way to do this is a TV series (Cable:profanity). Following much like Battlestar Galactica. More room for character development and maybe some new ones. Plus it will be great when you have to wait for the next episode, just like when it was back then:)
A movie is just too short, they condense it and you’ll have a Spiderman 3 again.
I agree with you Mike, I hate it when so much is covered in so little time in a movie. But would there be enough TV support to warrant it nowadays is the big question.
Thanks for writing Mike.