Live-action Robotech Movie

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.  

Stop being such a lying Macross purist. Harmony Gold OWNS Macross, and can do whatever they want with it. The only reason the live-action movie hasn't already come out and made BILLIONS is that they refuse to be responsible for a mediocre film, even if it would sell well. They're waiting for a script and director that can actually do the saga justice.

Big West has to license Macross from HG to make their low-budget, creatively-bankrupt cashgrab sequels. Pity they lack the integrity and passion that Harmony Gold carries.

[Mazinger]

16 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Stop being such a lying Macross purist. Harmony Gold OWNS Macross, and can do whatever they want with it. The only reason the live-action movie hasn't already come out and made BILLIONS is that they refuse to be responsible for a mediocre film, even if it would sell well. They're waiting for a script and director that can actually do the saga justice.

Big West has to license Macross from HG to make their low-budget, creatively-bankrupt cashgrab sequels. Pity they lack the integrity and passion that Harmony Gold carries.

Can't wait till Rick takes the Inifinity Stones away from the Regess in RT:Endgame.

[tekering]

20 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Harmony Gold OWNS Macross, and can do whatever they want with it.

I hope Matchbox makes more Macross merchandise!  

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Mazinger said:

Can't wait till Rick takes the Inifinity Stones away from the Regess in RT:Endgame.

That's gonna be so awesome!

[Bolt]

4 hours ago, tekering said:

I hope Matchbox makes more Macross merchandise!  

My eyes!!

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Bolt said:

My eyes!!

ROBOTECH TO THE RESCUE!

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, JB0 said:

Stop being such a lying Macross purist. Harmony Gold OWNS Macross, and can do whatever they want with it. The only reason the live-action movie hasn't already come out and made BILLIONS is that they refuse to be responsible for a mediocre film, even if it would sell well. They're waiting for a script and director that can actually do the saga justice.

Big West has to license Macross from HG to make their low-budget, creatively-bankrupt cashgrab sequels. Pity they lack the integrity and passion that Harmony Gold carries.

Don't do drugs, kids!

[seti88]

Wha...what did i wander into....

Doctors warning: Sniffing too much flower of life may have some side effects.

[Mazinger]

[anime52k8]

3 hours ago, seti88 said:

Wha...what did i wander into....

Doctors warning: Sniffing too much flower of life may have some side effects.

this is why I stick to smoking meth.

[M'Kyuun]

19 hours ago, JB0 said:

Stop being such a lying Macross purist. Harmony Gold OWNS Macross, and can do whatever they want with it. The only reason the live-action movie hasn't already come out and made BILLIONS is that they refuse to be responsible for a mediocre film, even if it would sell well. They're waiting for a script and director that can actually do the saga justice.

Big West has to license Macross from HG to make their low-budget, creatively-bankrupt cashgrab sequels. Pity they lack the integrity and passion that Harmony Gold carries.

  Sarcasm at its finest. 

Although the topic of this thread can pretty much be summed up as ,  the sh!t you guys say keeps me coming back. Def far more entertaining than RT itself.

[Gerli]

This thread is now going dormant until the new director is announced and we can start over again... it's a 5 year cicle I think...

[Bolt]

No way this thread is going dormant. RT is too much of a whipping boy to leave alone

[Mazinger]

In this threads defense they tend to announce a new director like every 6 months.  Or at least it feels that way.

[anime52k8]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

No way this thread is going dormant. RT is too much of a whipping boy to leave alone

but we already have the robotech comic thread; and that one actually gets regular new content to make fun of.

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

No way this thread is going dormant. RT is too much of a whipping boy to leave alone

*click*

[Invid99]

Quote

After helping steer the ship as the main director on Marvel’s Hawkeye series, Rhys Thomas has been set to direct Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari’s Robotech for Sony Pictures. The film is currently in development with the script by Marcum & Holloway with a rewrite by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. Harmony Gold also is involved.

Based on the popular ’80s anime TV series, Robotech 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.

Thomas is flying high after directing and executive producing the Disney+ Marvel series Hawkeye, with Jeremy Renner reprising his Avengers role. Thomas also is highly regarded in the comedy world for his work on Saturday Night Live and the Emmy-nominated IFC series Documentary Now!, which he co-created with Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers and directed. Thomas received four Emmy nominations for Documentary Now! and is in production on Season 4.

Gatewood & Tanaka’s feature Sharper sold in a bidding war to Apple and A24, with Julianne Moore attached to star. Ben Curon directed the film co-starring Sebastian Stan, which is in post-production. Gatewood & Tanaka are writing Untitled Asian American Heist Project for Amazon. Canton/Nunnari Productions’ credits include 300 and Immortals, and Canton is an executive producer of the Power universe for Starz.

Thomas is represented by WME, 3 Arts Entertainment and Ziffren Brittenham. Gatewood and Tanaka are repped by UTA, Management 360, Hansen Jacobson Teller.

https://deadline.com/2022/04/hawkeye-rhys-thomas-sonys-robotech-1235009525/

[no3Ljm]

Is this still related to the mentioned Live Robotech movie?

 

[Bolt]

I'll wait for the trailer to come out before I think it's real. 

[azrael]

23 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

Is this still related to the mentioned Live Robotech movie?

Yes.

15 minutes ago, Bolt said:

I'll wait for the trailer to come out before I think it's real. 

☝️. 'Till then...

Mod Note: Our patience with this topic is very thin and we have been through this several times over the near 2 decades MW has been around. Should the peanut gallery come out, we have no qualms locking this thread and keeping it that way for another decade.

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Invid99 said:

https://deadline.com/2022/04/hawkeye-rhys-thomas-sonys-robotech-1235009525/

Good grief, are we really doing this again?  You'd think by now people would've learned that any news about the supposed Robotech live-action movie is virtually guaranteed to be fake news. 🙄

Every two years or so we go through this.  Some third-rate entertainment "news" outlet publishes a claim that some influential Hollywood personality is absolutely, definitely, one-hundred-percent for sure signed on to [write/direct/star in] the live-action Robotech movie in development at [studio].  Some time passes, and we learn that the "news" was either totally overblown (e.g. Harmony Gold claiming for 5+ years that writers whose involvement was limited to writing one story treatment were on the project full-time working on its screenplay) or completely false (e.g. the many directors allegedly set to direct it, many of whom seem to have never even been formally approached about the project).

Given how "news" like this has turned out in the past, I suspect the reality of this report is likely closer to "HG left an unsolicited voicemail on Rhys Thomas's office phone".

Edited April 27, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[TangledThorns]

I'd rather just watch a rebooted ROBOTECH animated series. That has a less chance of failure.

[Big s]

3 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I'd rather just watch a rebooted ROBOTECH animated series. That has a less chance of failure.

Honestly, I’d feel more comfortable if they did do a reboot with original designs and a similar story that wasn’t such a rehash. It would never be as great as Macross, but if they went that route I’d probably at least try watching it

[Knight26]

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

I'd rather just watch a rebooted ROBOTECH animated series. That has a less chance of failure.

Honestly, if they took the Voltron route, and used the basic roots of the Robotech "Story" and then take it in a direction, just not the horrible crap direction their latest comic "Adaptation" did.

[pengbuzz]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Good grief, are we really doing this again?  You'd think by now people would've learned that any news about the supposed Robotech live-action movie is virtually guaranteed to be fake news. 🙄

Every two years or so we go through this.  Some third-rate entertainment "news" outlet publishes a claim that some influential Hollywood personality is absolutely, definitely, one-hundred-percent for sure signed on to [write/direct/star in] the live-action Robotech movie in development at [studio].  Some time passes, and we learn that the "news" was either totally overblown (e.g. Harmony Gold claiming for 5+ years that writers whose involvement was limited to writing one story treatment were on the project full-time working on its screenplay) or completely false (e.g. the many directors allegedly set to direct it, many of whom seem to have never even been formally approached about the project).

Given how "news" like this has turned out in the past, I suspect the reality of this report is likely closer to "HG left an unsolicited voicemail on Rhys Thomas's office phone".

In six months: "Josh Trank Tapped To Direct Robotech Adaptation".

[Bolt]

I haven't been following the legal roller coaster in great detail. And I'm not asking for an explanation. But , now that i think about it, it's too bad Sony wasn't doing a Macross movie, now that WWM is a thing. 
And as WWM becomes more of a thing, i wonder how this will affect Hollywood's lens on producing an RT movie. 
Whatever the case. Considering this project has been vaporware for so long, 
It would certainly be , lets say, interesting to see what this os going to look like. 

[Thom]

All I want is for then to redo all the visuals for the original Macross series, in the same way that SBY was redone, but keeping the vocals in honor of past actors. That's the one thing that keeps me from watching it again more often, just how bad the visuals have not held up over the years.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Thom

[Big s]

4 hours ago, Knight26 said:

Honestly, if they took the Voltron route, and used the basic roots of the Robotech "Story" and then take it in a direction, just not the horrible crap direction their latest comic "Adaptation" did.

That’s kinda what I was trying to suggest. 

With new original designs and a rebooted yet similar story, it may be worth a watch. If they keep clinging to the macross designs character wise and mecha it will just seem like a ripoff to most people. Not saying basing the designs and story isn’t a ripoff, but it would at least feel easier to stomach 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

In six months: "Josh Trank Tapped To Direct Robotech Adaptation".

Exactly.  The proposed Robotech live action movie - or at this point, perhaps we should call it the alleged Robotech live action movie - has been making announcements like this with monotonous regularity for over fifteen ****ing years now.  Taking "news" like this seriously was considered silly a decade ago.  Nowadays, even the Robotech fandom sees believing this kind of "news" as a confession of the most incredible gullibility.  

Like every previous alleged director, if Rhys Thomas was approached about Robotech at all it was almost certainly strictly informal and six months to a year from now we'll read about him committing to a project with actual prospects like James Wan, Andy Muschietti, et. al. did.

 

6 hours ago, Big s said:

Honestly, I’d feel more comfortable if they did do a reboot with original designs and a similar story that wasn’t such a rehash. It would never be as great as Macross, but if they went that route I’d probably at least try watching it

That's exactly what the alleged live-action movie was announced as originally... a "reimagining" of Robotech with all new everything because they couldn't legally use the designs of the Super Dimension Fortress Macross series in it, or base new designs on them, for legal reasons.  That was also the first really obvious clue the movie was never going to happen, because without the Japanese source material all that's left of Robotech is the localization names for various characters and a handful of original minor plot gimmicks.  (Literally, in a legal sense.)

Under those conditions, the studio's making an all-original robot movie... so why waste money paying royalties to Harmony Gold just to stick the name of a mostly-forgotten and largely unsuccessful 80's cartoon on it?  Especially a name that's freighted with a legacy of failure and a LOT of hate.  The studio could stick an original title on it and keep all the money for themselves.

[pengbuzz]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Under those conditions, the studio's making an all-original robot movie... so why waste money paying royalties to Harmony Gold just to stick the name of a mostly-forgotten and largely unsuccessful 80's cartoon on it?  Especially a name that's freighted with a legacy of failure and a LOT of hate.  The studio could stick an original title on it and keep all the money for themselves.

With that in mind, they may as well make an Exo-Squad movie; at least the license for that would be much simpler.

Heck, even a Zybots movie would be better off that RT, all things considered.

[Podtastic]

15 hours ago, Big s said:

With new original designs

Why bother at all then? Without the classic iconic designs you might as well be watching something else entirely.

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Podtastic

[JB0]

56 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

Why bother at all then? Without the classic iconic designs you might as well be watching something else entirely.

 

That pretty much sums up fifteen years of Robotech movie discussion in less than two dozen words.

[sqidd]

With the low quality of movies/ TV shows being pumped out these days I'll just assume they will ruin it. Especially since there is a horrible track record of reboots. And anime adaptations.

-Ghost In The Shell?

-Cowboy Beebop?

-Robocop?

-Ghostbusters?

-Star Trek (Chris Pine)?

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

With that in mind, they may as well make an Exo-Squad movie; at least the license for that would be much simpler.

Heck, even a Zybots movie would be better off that RT, all things considered.

Maybe, but if you're starting from zero why bother slapping the name of an existing property on it and paying royalties to someone who contributed basically nothing to the movie's development or production?

 

13 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Why bother at all then? Without the classic iconic designs you might as well be watching something else entirely.

Why indeed?  Mind you, it's not just the designs.  They can't adapt the original story either.  Under copyright law, Harmony Gold's copyright on the story in their Robotech TV series only extends to the new material they created in the adaptation process.  That's basically just some character names they changed and some minor plot points.  The studio would need to negotiate for and obtain separate license agreements from the Japanese owners of the intellectual property rights to the original shows if they wanted to adapt the story used in the TV series.

So not only can't the studio use the original designs or make new designs based on them, they can't use the original story or base their story on it either.  Small wonder the movie has never been more than a pipe dream, eh?

Of course, when it comes to Robotech, "iconic designs" means "Macross designs" and nothing else... especially in the eyes of the Robotech fanbase itself.  Harmony Gold's inability to use or authorize the use of those designs outside of merchandise, has played a contributing role in the failure of practically every attempt to continue the Robotech TV series (most overtly in Robotech 3000). 😉 

[electric indigo]

Very sorry to ressurect this zombie, but Col Price posted some conept art from "huge movie that unfortunately got pulled" that very much might have been the LARTM