Legendary Pictures has set its sights on the globally popular Japanese sci-fi franchise Gundam, and announced they’re developing a live-action film based on the franchise.
Gundam’s Sunrise and Legendary announced at the 2018 Anime Expo this month that they would be teaming up on the production of the adaptation for a franchise that was spawned nearly 40 years ago and has amassed a large fanbase across its various outlets including TV shows, manga, novels and other forms of media. The plot details for the live-action adaptation are currently being kept under wraps, with Cale Boyter from Legendary’s creative department overseeing the project.
The series is set in Universal Century, an era in which humanity’s growing population has led people to emigrate to space colonies. Eventually, the people living in the colonies seek their autonomy, and launch a war of independence against the people living on Earth. Through the tragedies and discord arising from this human conflict, not only the maturation of the main character, but also the intentions of enemies and the surrounding people are sensitively depicted. The battles in the story, in which the characters pilot robots known as mobile suits, are wildly popular.
Legendary is no stranger to large and explosive franchises and has all of the right tools to bring this franchise to life on the big screen following their work on the hit Jurassic World trilogy and the ever-expanding Monsterverse that began with the surprise hit reboot Godzilla in 2014 and continued with last year’s Kong: Skull Island and the upcoming Godzilla: King of Monsters, which is set to hit theaters May 31, 2019, and Godzilla vs. Kong, which is scheduled for a May 22, 2020 release.
