'Hawkeye' Director Rhys Thomas To Helm Live-Action 'Robotech' Movie

Development on a live-action “Robotech” movie began back in 2007 at Warner Bros. with a fleet of writers each taking a crack at turning the beloved Japanese anime series from the 1980s into a Hollywood feature film. Directors James Wan (“Aquaman,” “Furious 7“) and Andy Muschietti (“IT,” “The Flash“) had previously been attached, and now a new director has been selected by Sony Pictures.

Deadline reports that director Rhys Thomas is the latest name to be hired to make the “Robotech” film after recently working on the Marvel Studios series “Hawkeye,” which starred Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld.

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The popular sci-fi franchise is “set in a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology of an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific island and now is using that technology to fight off an impending alien invasion.”

Hollywood has been obsessed with attempting various live-action anime adaptions with things like the twenty-year development of “Akira” that was almost directed by Taika Waititi (“Thor: Love & Thunder“), the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced “Ninja Scroll,” The Russo Brothers-directed “Battle of The Planets,” a “Voltron” movie from Rawson Marshall Thurber (“Red Notice“), and Muschietti’s “Attack On Titan” movie at Warners.

Previous high-profile studio adaptations such as “Dragonball Evolution,” “Speed Racer,” “Ghost In The Shell,” the recent “Cowboy Bebop” series on Netflix, and “Alita: Battle Angel” have had poor to mixed reactions from audiences/critics, potentially leading to studios being a bit cautious about their own projects.

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A current version of the “Robotech” script was penned by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway with a rewrite coming from Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. Tanaka’s film “Sharper” starring Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan led to a bidding war with Apple/A24 landing it.