In June, John reported that Genndy Tartakovsky was helming an Astroboy feature film and that was all we knew about the project at that time.
Well in the interest of keeping tiny tidbits of news on our favourite artificial boy appearing on the big screen Movie Web says:
Imagi Animation Studios (TMNT) is set to start production on the anime comic, Astro Boy from Tezuka Productions.
The CG animated flick follows the adventures of a boy-sized robot named Atom, says The Hollywood Reporter; with the help of his friends, he battles enemies attacking the world and faces his own challenges in adapting to the human world.
Now, I grew up on these cartoons, and I am happy to see that he is carrying on in a new generation. Moreso, it appears that this is one franchise that may survive the “revamp” trend of the new millenium. Astroboy will be Astroboy. There will likely be changes, but at the core of it, this looks like it will still be Astroboy. I caught the new version of the cartoon on tv, and it was very much like the original. Hopefully the film will be close too.
I think a great tribute to the original series would feature Astroboy in a segment after the credits where he recaps his adventure to the master computer and deliberately messes up a detail in hopes that you catch it. It was a staple of the original series, that haunted my dreams. Mostly because he would do this, and say “did you catch my mistake?” and they NEVER told you what it was. EVER.
That would be an awesome after-credit easter-egg.