Mobile Suit Gundam Live-Action Movie Enters Full Production

A live-action Mobile Suit Gundam movie is in the works and it seems to have finally entered full production with Bandai Namco and Legendary co-financing it. The movie was actually announced back in 2018 but nothing came out of until now. With the formation of Bandai Namco Filmworks America, fans can finally look forward to seeing a Gundam movie on the big screen soon.

The live-action Mobile Suit Gundam will be written by Kim Mickle, who wrote the award-winning Netflix series Sweet Tooth. It will be released in theatres globally, though as of writing, it doesn’t have a director attached to the project, let alone a cast or crew. A teaser poster was released confirming that production had begun on the project, though it might be a few years before we can finally watch it.

“We plan to steadily announce details as they become finalised,” said Legendary and Bandai Namco in a press release. They continued:

“Mobile Suit Gundam, which began broadcasting in 1979, established the genre of ‘real robot anime’ that could not be described in terms of simple good and evil, which had been the trend of robot anime up to that point, with realistic depictions of war, detailed scientific examinations, and intricately interwoven human dramas that treated robots as ‘weapons’ called ‘mobile suits,’ and caused a huge boom.”

As far as mech or robot movies go in Hollywood, there is a notable lack of risky projects outside of the Transformers franchise. Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is often highlighted as the best in the genre, mainly due to its reverance for classic anime that inspired the movie like Neon Genesis Evangelion and, of course, Mobile Suit Gundam.

There are countless Gundam anime shows that have been produced since the late 70s and 80s, each covering different stories of galactic conflict and heroism. It will be interesting to see if Legendary, which also produced Pacific Rim, manages to capture the spirit of the anime.

Source: IGN