Red Notice Director Making A Live-Action Adaptation Of Classic Anime
Red Notice is the most viewed film in Netflix history, and now its director is being charged with bringing a classic anime series to a live-action format.
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Red Notice boasts the record of being the most viewed film in the history of Netflix. That could be very well due to having three of the biggest movies stars in the movie, but who’s counting? Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds teamed up for quite an exciting film. Now the director of Red Notice, Rawson Marshall Thurber, is set to take on another massive undertaking. He is being tapped to write and direct the newly announced Voltron live-action venture.
Voltron is said to currently be in a bidding war amongst several film studios and streaming services currently. Though Thurber is responsible for the biggest film on Netflix, they are said to not be in the running for the live-action anime movie. That is interesting considering Red Notice has racked up 364 million hours of viewing. However, they could also not be interested due to the director working on back-to-back sequels of Red Notice. They could just be happy with their partnership in that regard. That is another thing of note, as Thurber will likely be busy with his sequel development, so there is no telling if Voltron will be his next project. This could mean we won’t see the film until late 2023 or early 2024 at this point.
Voltron is an anime show that ran in the mid-1980s. It was originally based on Beast King GoLion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV. The series would be turned into syndication and retitled Voltron: Defenders of the Universe. The series saw a team of five pilots, known as the Robot Lions, work together to stop impending threats. Their five vehicles would form together to create the mega robot, Voltron. The show would become a massive cult classic, with DVD sales reaching hundreds of thousands of sales. While there have been several times in which the show was attempted as a reboot, it never worked the same. Nicktoons had a reboot in 2011 and even Netflix attempted this same feat in 2016, but they were just not the same. A live-action feature was also attempted in 2000, the mid-2000s, and 2010s, but never made it past the initial stages of production.
Thurber has a ton of experience with over-the-top action films as he famously wrote and directed the Dwayne Johnson-led action flicks: Skyscraper and Central Intelligence. Though Red Notice wasn’t the same as the others in nature, expect Johnson to appear or maybe be talked about for the new Voltron film. He could certainly play one of the villains. He might be too old and too big to fit into one of the Robot Lions vehicles, just saying.
Voltron was a massive hit when it first hit television screens, and the original show is still talked about as one of the best from the 1980s. It would join the growing list of live-action anime shows and films that have been adapted. Some have certainly worked, while others should have stayed in their anime form. Should Thurber pull this off, it could lead to a rather successful franchise, much like Transformers was.
