Kevin Munroe off of CG GATCHAMAN movie

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NO-ME

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http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/11822



FYI, on the IMAGI website the staff list has been taken down including Munroe as the director.

This seems to be a recurring pattern now with IMAGI. Astro Boy, the same thing happened. But also, the last time Astro Boy got relaunched in the US it was a big failure.

I wonder what happened and I wonder if it has anything to do with foreign investors with IMAGI, as well as the fact that in the US hardly anyone knows Gatchaman.
 
...Shouldn't this movie already be at least partway finished and coming out this year? Since, if it doesn't, that really throws off Imagi's whole "one movie ever year" plan.

Then again, even Astro Boy has promo pictures out, and that was scheduled to come a whole year after this. This, on the other hand, has only had a single poster released.
 
There was an IESB interview interview with Kevin Munroe where they described some of the character designs but we saw nothing new. The project unexplainedly changed screenwriters from Robert Mark Kamen to Paul Dini. Dini hasn't talked about it much.

It's just troubling that Astro Boy and now Gatchaman have both lost their directors. Gatchaman was supposed to come out in 2009. Originally they said 2008, but no way that was going to happen when they got a screenwriter then changed screenwriters AGAIN just before the strike hit. The strike and delays might've had something to do with it, but who knows.

But once again, few people in the US know the real Gatchaman. And maybe IMAGI feels its a lost cause. PG-13 level CG animated movies that are supposed to be serious and more adult tend to not make a lot of money.
 
And do you know why? Because they do not respect the original sanctity of their source material (I of course refer to a film that's "More than meets the eye", and featuring "Robots in Disguise", even if that one is live-action mostly...), thus insulting the viewers' intelligence; that among other failings (long story).

As for the Gatchaman movie, we'll just wait and see what happens. As I understand it, they are keeping the characters' original Japanese names (Ken the Eagle, Joe the Falcon, Jun the Swan, Jinpei the Swallow, and Ryu the Horned Owl, along with "Galactor" being the name of the organization, rather then the villian's name). OTOH, there is the possibility that it could just be another generic action film that only loosely adapts the original story (again, among other failings, which also again is a long story).

One thing is certain, at this point it's still too early to tell what's going to happen, so all we can really do is wait.
 
The films I was referring to were Final Fantasy and Beowulf, where you could probably make some arguments for Beowulf. But either way, Beowulf was this $150 million plus movie and it could only muster about $80 million US.



Something that constantly annoyed me about the way Munroe talked about the project is that he seemed to hint that they were going to give the origin and reasons for Sozen X and Katze, when I think all of that was covered in the series. And then I think he suggested the Earth Science Ninja Team having super powers which I thought was pretty bad as well.



I think its pretty bad if two of their planned bigger feature animation projects that had apparently already gotten distributors have both recently just lost their directors. I'd say Gatchaman at the very least looks to be in development hell right now.
 
Well, TNMT cost $20 million to make and was able to pull in a profit, so I doubt they'll be spending $150 million on Gatchaman or Astro Boy.
 
If what HG Revolution is saying is true, that company isn't going to be doing fine.
I bet the other studios are jealous that Imagi can churning out films at 1/3 the cost.

As much as I'd like to see these films, I'm not in any hurry. Someone's bound to come along and get this film on track.
 
Man, reading this thread and this one makes me sad, I loved how TMNT looked and was handled, when I saw the other properties they had I thought Imagi was just like a fans perfect company but apparently its not..
Sad to see Munroe go, a sequel to TMNT just got much less exciting, he really tried to please the fandom.

Haven't seen G-Force since I was a kid so I would have checked out Gatchaman, Munroe was very excited about that project too....

As for Astro Boy, I was REALLY excited to see him in theaters, I thought it was in good hands with Imagi. The revealed plot didn't seem good at all but I thought the same for TMNT and they made it worked.


Hopefully things are sorted out and its just all wild fan speculation, I really want to like imagi and see those two projects someday.
 
Well the only thing that would be speculation is the continuation of the projects and if they are alive and dead at the moment. Astro Boy and Gatchaman losing their directors is NOT speculation unfortunately.
 
The place is in shambles over at Imagi. Those that haven't quit have been fired by a new ex-dreamworks regime that replaced the ninjaturtles managment and have ruined the company. The Astroboy director got screwed over big and so did Kevin. Paul Dini has been off the project for a long time now too. Bad news travels slow, especially when new bosses are cleaning house.
 
I really fail to see the relevance between an animated movie that hasn't gotten beyond the drawing board and a live action movie that grossed over 300 million dollars domestically, but that's me.
 
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