Last year’s Astro Boy movie may have failed to set the box office alight, but that doesn’t mean you’ve seen the last of the character onscreen… And his next incarnation will be based on his best comic appearance to date: Universal Pictures is joining with Tezuka Productions and Despicable Me animators Illumination Entertainment to adapt Pluto for the big screen.
Pluto, an eight volume series by contemporary manga creators Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki, updates an original Astro Boy story, “The Greatest Robot On Earth” by turning it into a murder mystery about a series of robot and human murders investigated by a European robot police officer. If the movie – intended to mix live-action and CG animation – can capture half of the complexity and heart of the manga, it’ll be the SF movie of the year. Fingers are already crossed.
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