The studios behind Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla, Warcraft, and Pacific Rim are adapting the hit manga/anime franchise to the big screen via live-action. Let’s try and hope for the best.
After Legendary’s upcoming Detective Pikachu film (starring Ryan Reynolds), the studio is targeting My Hero Academia from producer Alex Garcia (Godzilla 2014, Blackhat, Kong: Skull Island) and creative director and producer Jay Ashenfelter (Pacific Rim: Uprising).
Not much is known about any cast, plot, or further details of what direction the guys over at Legendary want to take MHA but a live-action film was bound to happen given the massive success the series has seen since its debut in 2014 with over 17 million copies sold. It should also be added that Toho is planning on distributing the film in the east over in Japan.
In other news, My Hero Academia: Ones Justice, a new fighting game, is gearing up to deliver some hard-hitting action from some of your favorite MHA heroes and villains. You can check out details for a sponsored event with the FUNimation, Viz Media, and Bandai-Namco below.
Join us the in the finals of the #MyHeroOnesJustice tournament with @BandaiNamcoUS, @VIZMedia, @alpharadtv, and @Nanogenix on Twitch happening in a few minutes!https://t.co/FyLAyYnwJh pic.twitter.com/emLOgOXGeb
— Funimation 🔮🕸 (@FUNimation) October 26, 2018
Opinion Piece:
To be quite honest, this is not a surprise given the success of other super hero franchises such as Marvel and DC (financially speaking) over the last 10 years, and with many other live-action films based on manga released during the same time, this was bound to happen. I personally was hoping it would, but I would have always held my reservations, even more so now that I know its coming from the same studio that turned Pacific Rim into a Transformers rip-off with the sequel (ugh, don’t get me started on that).
Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised and things will go in a direction that fans will enjoy. Perhaps not. So far, Hollywood has done a really good job of ignoring what made so many manga series so special (see Netflix’s Death Note, Fox’s Dragon Ball Evolution, and DreamWorks’ Ghost in the Shell). Even so, with Japanese studios taking on titles like Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, and Attack on Titan, even they struggled to maintain the magic, so to speak. So should this be made at all? Hard to say, but I personally am cool with them giving it a try. I just wish it wasn’t Legendary.
