STARSHIP TROOPERS anime coming in 2012

Movie Anime about 13 years agoby

When I read Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers as a kid I wanted to suit up for the cause to fight the killer bugs from outer space. When I saw Paul Verhoeven's film in college I was in love with the style and happy with it's adaptation. Unfortunately since then they have had two horrible sequels that went direct to DVD. The CGI animated series called Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles only lasted one season. It looks as though fans of the story have something new to look forward to in the form of an anime.

Sony Pictures owns the rights to the property and are set to release Starship Troopers Invasion in 2012 from acclaimed director of Appleseed Shinji Aramaki. The poster above is by Hidetaka Tenjin.

Here is the synopsis:

In Starship Troopers: Invasion, a distant Federation outpost protected by the Starship John A. Warden comes under attack by bugs and the team on Fast Attack Ship Alesia is assigned to help evacuate the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Before the attack ship can rendezvous with the starship, Carl Jenkins, now at the ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission and goes missing in the nebula. The battle-hardened troopers are then charged with a rescue mission that may have much more sinister consequences than they ever could have imagined.

There is some movement on the project in the form of a website. If you visit www.starshiptroopersinvasion-movie.com you can see an early blog post that says the following:

We really want this installment of the Starship Troopers franchise to be known for its action, grit, and mind-blowing space battles.

I loved the mix of campy and sci-fi action from Verhoeven’s film. I am not sure how it will work if Aramaki’s film is strictly action. The new project is to be proeduced by Edward Neumeier (the original film and the Robocop movies). The project also has Casper Van Dien, who starred in the first and third films, and a screenplay by Flint Dille who has written tons of video games, the classic Transformers and GI Joe cartoons.

Starship Troopers Invasion is currently being animated by Sola Digital Arts, Inc. in Japan aimed at a Summer 2012 release. It is not known if this will be a theatriclal or Blu-ray release. What are your thoughts on this news?