Space Adventure Cobra 3D Movie(s) Planned

It was two years ago that Buichi Terasawa, creator of the classic Space Adventure Cobra manga, first revealed that he had received an offer for a live-action film adaptation of his space-opera. That was "off-the-record, though"... Now, at last, it's official: the rights for a live-action Cobra franchise are safe and secure, in the hands of Alexandre Aja - the French filmmaker whose latest directorial work is this month's fright film Piranha 3D (and previously directed The Hills Have Eyes and Mirrors).



News of this comes from the Deadline website, who received some interesting comments from Alex Aja. Among others, he talks about his childhood days of watching the classic TV anime series Cobra from 1982, which had quite a following here in Europe (though less so in the U.S.). So his closing statement - "I have been carrying this inside me for 30 years" - isn't that much of an exaggeration (albeit, technically, it couldn't have been more than 25 years, since the anime only began airing in France from 1985).

But, anyway, let's not get stuck in the past. So then... Alex Aja's plans for turning Cobra into a "tent pole-sized live-action franchise" are well under way. He will start working on the script "soon", together with Gregory Levasseur - his partner on all three horror movies mentioned earlier (and then some). Marc Sessego and Alexandra Milchan will also join them as co-producers, and the team is currently talking to everyone from financiers to "creature designers of films like Avatar and Star Trek, building a new world and doing it the right way". And, as any sci-fi filmmaker will tell you, the right way is the 3D way.

Ironically, as one Deadline commenter observes, the figure of the original Cobra character was inspired by the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, especially from his classic roles in the 1960s and '70s. Too bad that Belmondo is no shape to do this character justice, anymore.