Sony Making ROBOTECH Live-Action Movie, Hopes For a Franchise

Not too long ago, I wrote about how Warner Bros. put a long-dormant live-action Robotech movie back in development. Producers Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton (300, Immortals) had Mama director Andy Muschietti lined up to direct, but according to Variety, the project has now jumped from WB across town to Sony Pictures, where they plan "to move quickly into production" and use this as the start to a multi-film franchise. 300 and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra writer Michael Gordon is still writing the script, but there's no mention of Muschietti in this update, so it sounds like the director's chair is wide open once again.

If, like me, you've never seen an episode of the original anime, here's the synopsis:

Robotech takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off an alien invasion, with the fate of the human race ending up in the hands of two young pilots.

There are some brief statements from the filmmakers in Variety's piece, most of which sound like your traditional boiler-plate press release stuff: "we're excited to bring this to life" and fluff like that. But there was one quote that caught my eye:

“When the rights to Robotech became available we jumped; Mark and I knew it had what big movies in today’s world must have if they want to grab everyone: insane visuals and powerful themes,” said Nunnari. “The characters in Robotech wrestle with both the destructive and redemptive powers of technology; nothing is more relevant today than that.”

Thematically, this could be an interesting way to separate this franchise from its contemporaries. I got some flack when I compared it to Transformers last time around, but other than that and Pacific Rim, there haven't been too many other giant robot movies stomping around in theaters lately; still, if Nunnari is serious about smartly tackling the "destructive and redemptive powers of technology," they could actually give these films a reason for existing other than "seeing giant robots and cool pilots blow stuff up." These movies would actually be about something, which would be a nice change of pace from Bay's Transformers smash-em-ups.