Catch-up: Movies
This is the second of my catch-up articles, which focuses on anime-related movie news from the last month.
First up, there’ve been a couple of trickles about the new Rebuild Of Evangelion films. Active Anime have translated a Japanese article from Oricon Style, which says that the four films will be spread across three theatrical releases. The first and second installments will be released in early summer 2007 and early 2008, with the third and concluding movies as a double-feature in early summer 2008. Meanwhile, theOtaku.com have pointed out an (unsourced) interview with producer Toshimichi Ootsuki, which mentions that these new films will focus on Rei and Kowaru in “a school setting prior to the Angel attacks”.
Turning to Studio Ghibli, it’s been revealed by the New York Times that the Western release of the film could be delayed by conflicting rights to the Tales Of Earthsea property in the US. The Sci-Fi Channel in America produced a live-action adaptation of the story in 2004, and won’t release control of the rights until 2009.
That hasn’t stopped the studio moving on with their next film, however; the as-yet-untitled Miyazaki work has been pencilled in for a release in summer 2008. It’s also been noted that the storyboards for the production are watercolour paintings, presumably by Miyazaki himself, which is a first for Studio Ghibli.
Moving to live-action, the sycophantic movie news site Ain’t It Cool News has an interview with Ronny Yu, about the director’s upcoming Blood The Last Vampire film. According to Yu the film will take place in 1948 Tokyo and the director hopes to move away from the “blue/gray tone” conventional look of vampire films. Shooting will apparently start late this month or November.