Sci-Fi Storm

It’s been three years since we’ve heard of any movement on an English-language live action Star Blazers movie. Good news is that it’s still with Skydance, and Christopher McQuarrie is still set to direct. However, since McQuarrie has been busy with Mission: Impossible 6, Skydance has hired Zach Dean to write a new draft of the script. Dean wrote 2012’s Deadfall starring Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde, and also has Voyagers (about Carl Sagan and his wife, Anne Druyan) and World War II drama Atlantic Wall in pre-production. Skydance hopes to have it ready for McQuarrie to direct as soon as he’s done with M:I6.

The original late-70s Star Blazers (original Japanese Space Battleship Yamato) follows the crew of the Yamato (redubbed Argo in the English version, after the ship of Greek mythology and similar story), a rebuilt relic equipped for space flight to travel from Earth, slowly dying after an alien bombardment, across the galaxy following a message from a mysterious source promising a cure for the Earth. 2010 saw a live-action Japanese version that was true to the styles of the original.

Not a lot new, but according to Deadline the live-action Star Blazers movie at Skydance Productions announced in 2011 is still on track, but now Christopher McQuarrie will direct as well as write.

Based on the 1974 cartoon series Star Blazers, which had two seasons aired on TV in the U.S. (as well as a [sfs=387]third series released on DVD[/sfs]), which itself was a re-edit and English dub of the anime Space Battleship Yamato, it follows the crew of the Argo, a spaceship rebuilt from the buried remains of the Japanese battleship Yamato, on a mission to save an Earth devastated by radiation from the constant bombardment from an alien attack. Aided by alien technology including the Wave Motion Engine, which can jump the ship across light years of space, and the Wave Motion Gun, one of the most powerful weapons ever built, they race across the universe to pick up the Cosmo DNA, which can remove all the radiation from the surface of Earth and make it livable again.

Space Battleship Yamato was made into a live-action Japanese movie in 2010, but it so far as not seen a release in the U.S.

The Japanese live-action version of the anime series Space Battleship Yamato (known as Star Blazers in the US) has torn up the box office in Japan – but there has been no word of a US release, dubbed or otherwise. But Deadline is reporting that an American live-action version is in the works. David Ellison, through his Skydance Productions (which financed True Grit), is negotiating the rights, and plans to hire Christopher McQuarrie to write the script. What is interesting is the article says that Star Blazers was “based on” the original Space Battleship Yamato – it was really an edited/dubbed version, with mostly only minor changes for the American audience (like rather than glorify a Japanese WWII battleship, they re-christened the ship the Argo from Greek mythology, and to tone down some of the more adult themes and Japanese patriotism), but the article makes it seem more like two independent but similar productions.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a dubbed version of the Japanese version though…I’m not sure I could sit through a feature-length visual eye-fest while having to keep reading subtitles…

I should have posted this yesterday – here is a new trailer for that live-action Space Battleship Yamato movie we mentioned in January. Some of the scenes are direct live-action takes from the original anime – even how they zoom in. I feel like a kid again…

I just got a link to this video…anyone know anything about this? Any chance of an English dub, like the original?
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