Live Action ‘Astro Boy’ Movie Will Bring Superhero Flavor To The Anime Character

"…nostalgia is a powerful force, particularly when connected to adults defending the entertainment they worshipped during a pre-critical phase of their thinking. Nostalgia can cloud judgment in ways that romanticize an often-crappy past while damning a future that radiates a lot more promise than the nostalgic are willing to allow," Nathan Rabin wrote recently at The Dissolve, in a column taking a different perspective on the current reboot/remake culture and the complaints that come with it. "Myopic nostalgia assumes that the new will inherently be worse than the old out of a combination of misplaced romanticization of the past and knee-jerk cynicism about the future." So how does that apply to "Astro Boy"?

THR reports that a live action version of the anime character is now in the works. Of course, the robot boy is best known from the children’s cartoon, and to be honest, I haven’t revisited it since I was a kid and I would wager it probably doesn’t hold up very well. Meanwhile, the 2009 animated movie flopped hard and no one really remembers it exists, so the room is there for another big screen stab at the character. The project is being shepherded by effects house Animal Logic ("Avengers: Age Of Ultron," "Happy Feet"), with producers seeking a screenwriter to get this moving. So, this is probably a few years away at least, especially since there’s no director involved yet, but the ambitions for this one are big. 

“We’ve seen him as a manga, an anime and an animated movie but we’ve never seen him as a live-action movie or him as a superhero,” said exec Zareh Nalbandian. “We actually see him in the same league as an Iron Man.”

So, another childhood icon ruined or one that can be reimagined? Let us know below.