Hajime Isayama’s Attack On Titan is one of the biggest manga and anime franchises to come out of Japan in a long time. There’s been the incredible anime series adaptation, the live-action movie (split into two parts), videogames, and now the logical next-step has arrived: the American remake.
Deadline reports that Warner Bros is snapping up the right to the epic story, and they’ve appointed David Heyman as producer. Heyman has a great history with the studio, having worked on the Harry Potter movies and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, as well as movies like Gravity, Paddington and the in-development Willy Wonka film.
In case you haven’t seen Attack On Titan (and you really should, the anime series is incredible), it “follows humans living behind a wall through generations to keep themselves safe from the alien Titans. However, curious as to what is beyond the wall, they form a scouting mission. It is not long before they find themselves battling the Titans as they try to save humanity once again.”
The site notes that the US remake would be adapting the live-action films, which were directed by Shinji Higuchi (Shin Godzilla). The first part was a big financial success in Japan, the second was not.
The site also makes a comparison to Akira, which Warner Bros has had in various stages of development for years and years now. Despite the best efforts of several filmmakers, no one has been able to translate Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga and anime masterpiece into live-action, so presumably the studio is hoping that Attack On Titan will give them a slightly easier ride. As the live-action version showed, it seems like an easier concept to get across in animation than live-action, but we’ll be interested to see how this one develops. And if they can’t make it, or they do it badly, there’s always the manga. And the anime.
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