Live-action Robotech Movie

[Sandman]

58 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

If HG wanted to make money, they should make a documentary (with a digital camcorder that doesn't require film) of how they tried to resurrect RT all those times. Then just label it "The Making of Robotech". Then they could promote it as a comedy; I think at least a few people would see it just out of boredom.

 

I would. It would probably be more entertaining than an actual new series.

[Bolt]

Hg will attempt to sell to BW

[Einherjar]

Now I definitely call BS on whatever was actually announced this year regarding licensing.  HG really has just garbage comic books for the near future.

[Thom]

Maybe the next update will be HG declaring bankruptcy...

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

If HG wanted to make money, they should make a documentary (with a digital camcorder that doesn't require film) of how they tried to resurrect RT all those times. Then just label it "The Making of Robotech". Then they could promote it as a comedy; I think at least a few people would see it just out of boredom.

Didn't they basically do that twelve years ago as part of the "special edition" Shadow Chronicles DVD?

[hachi]

10 hours ago, Einherjar said:

Now I definitely call BS on whatever was actually announced this year regarding licensing.  HG really has just garbage comic books for the near future.

I don't know how they keep on producing those comic books. Even comic books that seem to be popular (and I bet sell more) get cancelled all the time. How is this financially feasible for them?

[Einherjar]

2 hours ago, hachi said:

I don't know how they keep on producing those comic books. Even comic books that seem to be popular (and I bet sell more) get cancelled all the time. How is this financially feasible for them?

From the content of recent comics books, I think they’re banking on short term projects revolving around gimmicks that the powers that be know will eventually warn out their welcome.  For example, a crossover with Voltron because they’re both robot shows (yes, that really did happen).

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, hachi said:

I don't know how they keep on producing those comic books. Even comic books that seem to be popular (and I bet sell more) get cancelled all the time. How is this financially feasible for them?

Oh, that's fairly easy to explain... because it's the same explanation that's behind everything else Robotech does.

Put simply, Robotech manages to continue limping along where any sensible brand would've packed it in and gone home because they and their licensees will cut any and every corner that can be cut in order to keep development and production costs low enough to turn a profit from the couple thousand fans who still open their wallets for the franchise.  They don't care if it negatively impacts quality, because the remaining Robotech fans are so desperate to validate their faith in the brand that they'll buy most anything. 

Titan Comics picked up Robotech because the license was dirt cheap, and kept costs down on the production of the comic by tracing everything that could be traced to avoid having to draw things themselves while half-assing the writing.  This is why the comic's characters have so many unnatural-looking poses and facial expressions.  The reason so many of the Titan comic's action panels look like poorly-composited Photoshop collages of Macross lineart is because that's exactly what they usually are.  Even if Diamond overships to inflate their sales numbers for the comic, Titan still turns a modest profit on the comic because of all the corners they cut making it.

The same aggressive corner-cutting prevails in every part of the Robotech franchise.  Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was made on the cheap by using the cheapest animators HG was able to find (the interns at DR Movie), the cheapest orchestra money could rent, and all the new design work was done in-house by Tommy himself on his pittance of a salary.  The one and only place they couldn't cut corners was the voice actor budget, since the returning voice actors are all SAG members now they had to pay guild rates... so a huge chunk of its tiny budget went to that.   Their current crop of toy and game licensees are all itty-bitty indie outfits, two of whom were literal toy bootleggers, who are producing limited edition merch in tiny production runs (in some cases as small as 200 pieces) or using the cheapest materials possible (e.g. miniatures for board games being printed cardstock instead of plastic) due to low demand while hiding behind "limited edition" to justify a premium price tag.

[hachi]

>> Titan still turns a modest profit on the comic because of all the corners they cut making it.

Looks like they made some profit enough to hire Brenden Fletcher to write a story (who looks more legit than the other unknown RT comic writers to me). Sadly I don't think they're gonna stop doing the comics in the foreseeable future.

Quote

Event Horizon (3 of 4)! Robotech’s epic event approaches its climax, as classic characters clash and fall! With an extra story by Brenden Fletcher (Isola, Motorcrush) and artist Sarah Stone (Netflix’s Castlevania)!

 

[Einherjar]

They can throw pretty much anyone they want in that mess.  It does not change the fact that all those imitation Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada characters in the comics are going to have Transformers quality dialogue coming out of their mouths in addition to the exposition Robotech is notorious for.

Edited September 7, 2019 by Einherjar

[pengbuzz]

On 9/6/2019 at 3:21 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Didn't they basically do that twelve years ago as part of the "special edition" Shadow Chronicles DVD?

Good point.

 

[pengbuzz]

On 9/6/2019 at 12:24 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, that's fairly easy to explain... because it's the same explanation that's behind everything else Robotech does.

Put simply, Robotech manages to continue limping along where any sensible brand would've packed it in and gone home because they and their licensees will cut any and every corner that can be cut in order to keep development and production costs low enough to turn a profit from the couple thousand fans who still open their wallets for the franchise.  They don't care if it negatively impacts quality, because the remaining Robotech fans are so desperate to validate their faith in the brand that they'll buy most anything. 

Titan Comics picked up Robotech because the license was dirt cheap, and kept costs down on the production of the comic by tracing everything that could be traced to avoid having to draw things themselves while half-assing the writing.  This is why the comic's characters have so many unnatural-looking poses and facial expressions.  The reason so many of the Titan comic's action panels look like poorly-composited Photoshop collages of Macross lineart is because that's exactly what they usually are.  Even if Diamond overships to inflate their sales numbers for the comic, Titan still turns a modest profit on the comic because of all the corners they cut making it.

The same aggressive corner-cutting prevails in every part of the Robotech franchise.  Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles was made on the cheap by using the cheapest animators HG was able to find (the interns at DR Movie), the cheapest orchestra money could rent, and all the new design work was done in-house by Tommy himself on his pittance of a salary.  The one and only place they couldn't cut corners was the voice actor budget, since the returning voice actors are all SAG members now they had to pay guild rates... so a huge chunk of its tiny budget went to that.   Their current crop of toy and game licensees are all itty-bitty indie outfits, two of whom were literal toy bootleggers, who are producing limited edition merch in tiny production runs (in some cases as small as 200 pieces) or using the cheapest materials possible (e.g. miniatures for board games being printed cardstock instead of plastic) due to low demand while hiding behind "limited edition" to justify a premium price tag.

In other words: charging max prices for max profit while using minimal cost materials and work to be purchased by fans who hope against hope for a "RT revival" that will never come.

Edited September 7, 2019 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, hachi said:

>> Titan still turns a modest profit on the comic because of all the corners they cut making it.

Looks like they made some profit enough to hire Brenden Fletcher to write a story (who looks more legit than the other unknown RT comic writers to me). Sadly I don't think they're gonna stop doing the comics in the foreseeable future.

Well, they have to up spending a little since this comic is ending with a whimper rather than a bang anyway...

But I doubt it's all that expensive, given that they're just having him write a little mini-comic.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

In other words: charging max prices for max profit while using minimal cost materials and work to be purchased by fans who hope against hope for a "RT revival" that will never come.

Bingo.

Part of it is helped by the fact that manufacturing has become cheap enough for them to do many types of merchandise as on-demand small batch orders instead of having to stock a lot of merchandise at any given time.  Things like the two artbooks they've printed in the last 15 years were helped by the fact that there wasn't really much new content, and they had the option of padding the books without mercy.  The Udon "Macross Saga" artbook is mostly just a bad reprinting of portions of Macross Perfect Memory with reprinted material from the old website's "Infopedia" warts and all.  They padded the The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles artbook like a menstruating firehose by giving over more than half of each 2 page spread to a large, low-resolution screenshot from the "movie" to stretch about 20-30 pages of content to 144 pages and then charge a premium for it even though a fair chunk of that new art had already been printed in the halfhearted Newtype USA article they tried to use to promote the project.

Two of their toy licensees (now one, as one has gone out of business) were literally toy bootleggers using the cheapest Chinese factories available to run out knockoff Macross toys and Transformers merchandise.

[camk4evr]

On 9/7/2019 at 8:43 AM, Einherjar said:

They can throw pretty much anyone they want in that mess.  It does not change the fact that all those imitation Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada characters in the comics are going to have Transformers quality dialogue coming out of their mouths in addition to the exposition Robotech is notorious for.

Somehow I doubt it'd be that good. I epexct The Room quality of dialogue.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, camk4evr said:

Somehow I doubt it'd be that good. I epexct The Room quality of dialogue.

At this rate, I'd expect "South Park" level of dialogue, to be frank.

[Gerli]

Rumor is... Andy Muschietti droped the Robotech Movie project.... shocking, Right?

[Einherjar]

4 hours ago, Gerli said:

Rumor is... Andy Muschietti droped the Robotech Movie project.... shocking, Right?

Damn... there goes another alternate universe.

[Bolt]

I don't see anything official on that. At this time. Must be insider speak. 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Gerli said:

Rumor is... Andy Muschietti droped the Robotech Movie project.... shocking, Right?

 

3 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I don't see anything official on that. At this time. Must be insider speak. 

You wouldn't, yeah... because Andy Muschietti had never made any commitment to direct Robotech in the first place.

Like Sylvain White, Nic Mathieu, James Wan, and a double handful of other people that the rumor mill and entertainment "reporting" of at-best dubious merit claimed were attached to direct Robotech, Andy Muschietti was approached about the film but never committed to have any involvement with it.  They simply spun the lack of a hard "No" in that inevitable politely worded form letter response as a "Yes" to build hype for a proposed development and started talking about it as though he was set to start work on Robotech as soon as he finished It: Chapter Two.  

We've simply hit the point where even Robotech fans have to acknowledge that Andy Muschietti isn't going to direct Robotech.  He's already committed to Netflix's Locke & Key as a producer, and Warner Bros has him signed to direct their The Flash movie (set for a 2022 release) and a big budget American adaptation of Attack on Titan (release TBD).  It's a thing we've seen before, like when it became obvious Sylvain White wasn't interested in Robotech and signed on to Walled In and The Losers, or when Nic Mathieu turned them down and directed Spectral instead, or when James Wan opted to do Annabelle Comes Home after Aquaman instead of Robotech.  

It's just come back around to that harsh realization Robotech fans have to face when the only piece of positive news they've heard in years turns out to have been fake news.

[Einherjar]

4 hours ago, Bolt said:

I don't see anything official on that. At this time. Must be insider speak. 

I think the closest to official news you will ever hear about it is when the next person is name dropped as possibly involved with the movie in his place.

[Gerli]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

 

You wouldn't, yeah... because Andy Muschietti had never made any commitment to direct Robotech in the first place.

 

He is only interested in doing the Macross part, without the rights to use the designs, he can't do sh*t

 

[Keith]

The only way this will ever happen is if Nicholas Cage decides to direct & star in it.

[Bolt]

On 2/8/2020 at 2:27 PM, Gerli said:

He is only interested in doing the Macross part, without the rights to use the designs, he can't do sh*t

 

As someone who says Macross is in his heart.. wouldn't it be great if he did a Big West ,Hollywood Macross movie.? In your face HG Avoiding the "Robotech " issues and doing a Kawamori treatment of something very Macross but not necessarily SDFM.. Just wondering out loud..

 

34 minutes ago, Keith said:

The only way this will ever happen is if Nicholas Cage decides to direct & star in it.

Didn't know he was a big RT fan. But I guess that makes sense, considering his other interests. Though i doubt he could lever the backing to touch it.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Bolt

[Dynaman]

I wrote this a couple years ago but it is still true so...  "It is hard to keep track of the Live Action Robotech "Directors" a they go by"

[Seto Kaiba]

On 2/8/2020 at 5:27 PM, Gerli said:

He is only interested in doing the Macross part, without the rights to use the designs, he can't do sh*t

Well, yes... that was why the proposed live action Robotech movie was described from the outset as a "reimagining" of the story.

Harmony Gold has, despite the claims of many fans to the contrary, known all along that it can't use the Super Dimension Fortress Macross IP in new film works of any type.  That's why fans are always disappointed in new Robotech works, as they're essentially expecting bootleg Macross sequels, and why they did their best to control expectations when they were first announcing the Robotech live action movie proposal... because there's no mortal way they'd be allowed to base anything off the Macross designs, and most of the creative decisions in any live action movie that got made would be dictated by the need to avoid doing anything that might provoke a copyright infringement lawsuit.

 

10 hours ago, Keith said:

The only way this will ever happen is if Nicholas Cage decides to direct & star in it.

Even then, Robotech is too obscure to attract any investors.  They can talk all they want about who's supposedly going to direct it or who wrote the latest story treatment when they needed a few bucks to pay the rent on their Los Angeles office, but without investors willing to put their money into a Robotech movie there's no chance of it ever getting made, no matter what.

 

9 hours ago, Bolt said:

As someone who says Macross is in his heart.. wouldn't it be great if he did a Big West ,Hollywood Macross movie.? In your face HG Avoiding the "Robotech " issues and doing a Kawamori treatment of something very Macross but not necessarily SDFM.. Just wondering out loud..

They can't, or at least they wouldn't be able to call it Macross due to HG's trademarks on the name, logo, and key iconography in the US.

 

 

[Ignacio Ocamica]

Sorry, but I have to ask the stupid questions, since I have not been following all the licence/copyright/trademark renewal.

Can HG make a RT LA and use the SDF Macross designs? Story, kite, VF's, etc?

What has HG exactly renewed?

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

Sorry, but I have to ask the stupid questions, since I have not been following all the licence/copyright/trademark renewal.

Can HG make a RT LA and use the SDF Macross designs? Story, kite, VF's, etc?

What has HG exactly renewed?

That's a loooooong story.  Short answer.  No.

They can keep selling their toys and Frankentoon for awhile.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

Sorry, but I have to ask the stupid questions, since I have not been following all the licence/copyright/trademark renewal.

It's not a stupid question... it's a complex situation and you're asking for information from the experts.  That's the smart thing to do. 

 

1 hour ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

What has HG exactly renewed?

Sorry for answering out of order, but the answer will flow better if I answer the second question first.

What Harmony Gold renewed last year was their license from Tatsunoko Production that grants them the international distribution and international merchandising rights to the three original anime series used to produce Robotech: Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.  Essentially, what they've renewed is the exclusive permission to edit those three shows and put them on TV, home video, and streaming services outside of Japan and to make and sell merchandise based on those three shows outside of Japan.  Those are the only rights they have to those shows under their license from Tatsunoko Production.

All they can do is distribute those shows and make merch for them, though.  They can't use the designs, characters, music, stories, etc. to make new animated or live action film works without the express permission of the copyright holders.  For Macross, that means Big West.  For the other two, that means Tatsunoko.  

 

1 hour ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

Can HG make a RT LA and use the SDF Macross designs? Story, kite, VF's, etc?

Nope.  They would need Big West's permission to adapt the Macross story, characters, mechanical designs, etc. for a live action movie.

If they tried to just do it, they'd get sued for infringing on Big West's copyrights on the Macross material.

[Bolt]

From what i heard. HG and Tatsunoko have signed an agreement to renew. Let that sink in.  They haven't actually renewed the agreement. Presumably they will when the current license expires. 

The clock is still ticking..

Edited February 10, 2020 by Bolt

[Ignacio Ocamica]

Thank you guys for the replies!!!

@Mommar 

@Seto Kaiba crystal clear answer!!!

@Bolt I've heard the news about the renewal but we haven't read the actual/official agreement on paper yet.

A HG anouncememt at a comic convention means nothing to me.

[Bolt]

28 minutes ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

A HG anouncememt at a comic convention means nothing to me.

Yes. That's the point. 

[Gerli]

1 hour ago, Ignacio Ocamica said:

 

A HG anouncememt at a comic convention means nothing to me.

Well, when that happens, we laugh for a while, but aside the fun time, yeah, it's nothing 

[azrael]

People can scream “actively being developed” all they want. Someone can attach all the names and faces they want. But until a studio greenlights it, books shooting venues, hires actors and crews, etc., it’s all vaporware. 

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, azrael said:

People can scream “actively being developed” all they want. Someone can attach all the names and faces they want. But until a studio greenlights it, books shooting venues, hires actors and crews, etc., it’s all vaporware. 

Yup.  

Even then, a simple sanity check should always be performed on any name or face allegedly attached to the project because they try to build hype by claiming people are attached who actually aren't... like Kasdan, Millar, and the other writers who were just guys who turned in story treatments for a quick buck with zero intention of sticking around.

[Einherjar]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

People can scream “actively being developed” all they want. Someone can attach all the names and faces they want. But until a studio greenlights it, books shooting venues, hires actors and crews, etc., it’s all vaporware. 

The products with plot they’re giving the green light to in the interim are pretty embarrassing too.