Gephyrophillia | Watch This Space #156

Originally Posted on 09/07/2007 by Jeff Harris

During the summer, I'll admit. I went to a couple of movies and enjoyed most of the ones I had seen. Transformers was brilliantly executed, and I can't wait for the sequel. Superbad was one of the best teen-driven movies I've seen in long, long time. Spider-Man 3 . . . okay, so they can't all be winners.

I also noticed that there has been a strange trend developing in the movie industry, largely based on the success of Transformers. It seems that if it was an animated series from the 1980s, it's ready to be developed into a motion picture. As the seasons changed, nearly every '80s franchise has been greenlit as a potential movie franchise in the forseeable future.

Just today, Warner Bros. announced plans to bring the classic anime franchise Robotech to the big screen courtesy of Maguire Entertainment. The unit's owner, Tobey Maguire, is turning in his webbed tights and will serve not only as an executive producer of the film, but also the lead role of Rick Hunter. And so the Toonami movie trend continues.

And once again, I've lost a bunch of you all. What do I mean by "Toonami movie trend?" Hear me out. For a couple of years now, there has been a trend to develop movies based on older animation properties. It has only grown in recent months largely to the success of Transformers this summer. Because the popular toyetic franchise has made over half a billion dollars in box office receipts worldwide, many studios are looking to get a piece of that nostalgic pie.

One studio in particular, Warner Bros., is on this heavy nostalgic trip. Aside from next summer's Get Smart, the Watertower's is also preparing the much anticipated update of the popular 60s anime series Speed Racer. Although it's still in production, it's release date came on the heels of an impressive slate of movie titles connected by two common themes. They are older animation properties and one or more incarnations of the property aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami block.

Toonami, for you seven people that are just joining the program, is the Saturday night block where new episodes of Naruto air every week in the US. It's been the home to a variety of action-animation for over a decade, although in recent years, the slate has mostly been Shonen Jump-oriented Japanese animation. Nearly every major action property in the United States has aired in one incarnation on Toonami. Warner Bros. is adapting two DC Comics-based Toonami shows and three non-comic series, not counting Robotech.

The two DC Comics-based Toonami titles currently in development at the Watertower are Justice League and Teen Titans. The non-comic titles are ThunderCats (an animated film based on Ted Wolf's iconic feral heroes that was the first series to air on Toonami), Jonny Quest (based on Doug Wiley's classic adventure series which spun off into The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest), and Masters of the Universe (based on Mattel's sword-and-sorcery toy set which spun off an earlier film and three animated series, the most recent being a part of Toonami).

Robotech's announcement just comes days after it was revealed that Fox is finally producing a live-action version of another Toonami series, Dragon Ball Z. Paramount, whose Dreamworks unit produced Transformers, is adapting another Hasbro property (and Toonami veteran), G.I. Joe, into a live-action feature film. Voltron and Cyborg 009 are both currently in development as international productions funded by American firms. A trio of animated films are also on tap from independent producers. Gatchaman (which was seen as G-Force in 2000 on Toonami) and Astro Boy (whose recent series aired on the block during its final weekday run and briefly on Saturday nights) are in production at Imagi Entertainment, producers of TMNT and Zentrix, while Samurai Jack, Cartoon Network's first original action property, is currently in development at Frederator Films.

It's funny really. The reason Toonami picked up these shows are exactly the reason why they're developing major motion pictures based on these franchises. The world is catching up with the rest of us.

*end transmission*

Jeff Harris,
The X Bridge Creator/Webmaster
September 7, 2007