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Sony’s Robotech is getting It status.
Andy Muschietti, who directed the upcoming film version of Stephen King’s It, has been tapped to develop and helm the studio’s adaptation of the anime featuring giant armored warriors.
Muschietti’s creative partner Barbara Muschietti will join Gianni Nunnari and Mark Canton in producing the project, which is based on the 1980s cartoon series from Harmony Gold USA and Japan’s Tatsunoko Productions. It was re-edited and re-dialogued to combine three Japanese anime series to give the producers enough episodes to air as a daily syndicated series.
Robotech is a sprawling sci-fi epic that takes place in a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology of an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific island. The technology comes in handy when the humankind has to fend off a wave of alien invasions.
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Hollywood has been trying to bring the mechas to the big screen for over a decade, with Sony picking up the rights in 2015. The studio previously courted James Wan to direct the potential franchise before the filmmaker committed to Aquaman.
The project currently has no writer but the studio expects to work with the Muschietti siblings to find someone to execute Andy Muschietti’s filmmaker. The project is a high priority for Sony and it is moving quickly.
Sanford Panitch and Matthew Milam are overseeing for Columbia. David Hopwood is shepherding for Canton, while Shannon Gaulding runs point for Hollywood Gang.
Frank and Jehan Agrama, who produced the original series, are also involved.
Muschietti got his start in horror — he made his English-language debut with the 2013 surprise hit Mama — and is awaiting the September release of It from New Line Cinema. The movie’s trailer scored one of the largest views ever in a 24-hour period, with prerelease interest at stratospheric levels. The same applies to Hollywood interest in Muschietti, who looks with It to have pulled off the difficult task of adapting one of King’s classics.
The filmmaker recently came on board to direct the pilot for Hulu’s television series adaptation of the Joe Hill comic book Locke and Key.
Muschietti is repped by WME.
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