10 Upcoming Movie Adaptations Of Japanese Anime (And If They Will Work)
2. Cobra
The Anime:
Set in the far future, Buichi Terasawa's original manga series tells the story of an office worker named Johnson who, fed up of his mundane job and life, decides to visit the Trip Movie Corporation - a company that enables its customers to experience a dream as though it were a reality. In his dream Johnson becomes Cobra, an adventurer who explores space and battles intergalactic pirates with his cybernetic arm-laser gun.
What We Know:
The Hills Have Eyes (2006) director Alexandre Aja has been enlisted to direct a live-action adaptation of Space Adventure Cobra, the 1982 feature-length anime based on Terasawa's manga. The $150 million project was announced back in 2011, with a 2013 release date targeted (and subsequently missed), though Aja confirmed last year that he was just waiting for a "major movie star" to become available.
Will It Work?
The similarly themed 2013 anime Space Pirate Captain Harlock didn't win over many fans in the west (apart from James Cameron, who praised the inventive use of 3D), though the success of Guardians of the Galaxy showed us that people still love a good space saga if done correctly.
Sci-fi isn't too far away from the superhero flick when it comes to in-vogue movie genres, and if production gets underway sooner rather than later Cobra may be able to ride the intergalactic wave that upcoming Star Wars/Alien/Transformers instalments are bound to create.