Live-Action News Round-up, June 2010

In the last week of slacking, several news about live-action movies (and a TV drama) have crossed my interwebs browsing paths, while piling up tons of anime news for a similar "round-up" post - that one will be coming up shortly after this.

To start off, we've just uploaded a "proof of concept" trailer for a CG-heavy live-action movie project called Samurai, which is being planned by a small team headed by Jerry O'Flaherty (Gears of War art director). The film's style mimics that of 300, but uses the Unreal 3 game engine to render the props and environments. Twitch has a bit more info on the project, if you're interested.



Next, ANN had a minor update about the live-action TV drama Moyashimon, based on the manga of the same title authored by Masayuki Ishikawa, which previously had an anime adaptation in 2007. The drama's official website posted a third preview trailer (click the pink thingie in the menu at the bottom), ahead of its July 8 TV debut in Japan, as the first live-action series on the Fuji TV's popular late-night Noitamina timeslot. The story is about some dude who can see - and talk with - germs. Fascinating...

Possibly the best live-action news from the past week was that Mamoru Oshii's movie Assault Girls (local trailer #1, #2) will be released on DVD in North America, on October 19, 2010. This version will have both English audio and subtitles, with the original Japanese audio also included, of course. Props to Nippon Cinema for breaking the story.

The live-action movie Priest has suffered yet another delay - its third one so far, allegedly due to "issues with its conversion to 3D" - and is now expected to premiere on May 13, 2011. Originally, Priest is a manhwa ("Korean manga") about a priest (duh!) who tries to rescue his niece from vampires. The movie's titular character is played by Paul Bettany, but most importantly it also stars Maggie Q as the hawt priestess that's helping him, along with some other random dude.

And finally, ANN was tipped about an update on the live-action Akira movies project, naming a certain Albert Torres as the new writer hired by the production team. The film is still in pre-production, so I guess it's not cancelled, after all. Not yet.