Directly from the FUNimation horse’s mouth:
The heroes from your favorite series are headed to the big screen. 20th Century FOX announced the acquisition of feature film rights to the “DragonBall” property, and is planning for its studio division, FOX 2000, to develop a live action movie based on the property. This is very exciting news for Dragon Ball Z fans.
FUNimation Vice President and Producer Daniel Cocanougher had this to say: “FUNimation is very excited to be working with FOX in their production of a live-action Dragon Ball Z Feature Film. FOX plans to place this movie on a fast-track production schedule, and may have a movie released as early as Fall 2003 or Summer 2004. FOX is an excellent movie studio, producing such huge hits as X-Men and Star Wars, among many others. They feel that this project will not end with one movie, but will become a major, multi-picture franchise like Star Wars. Clearly, this is a remarkable upward turning point for the Dragon Ball Z property. It will also be very interesting for all Dragon Ball Z fans to try to predict the names of the stars, the director and producers, and the storyline that will be used. FUNimation plans for its web site, www.dragonballz.com, to be the focal point of information on the production of the movie and all the fan events leading up to it. We would like to thank all the Dragon Ball Z fans worldwide for creating the excitement that allows such a major announcement as this—the new, completely original, live-action movie: Dragon Ball Z.”
Commentary: This is a mixed bag, in my opinion. It’s good news that there will be a new DBZ product in the works. Unfortunately, I believe that DBZ is too “cartoony” a property to properly make it to the big screen. For the characters to be played by actors, their looks will have to be completely changed, and in big-studio properties like this, the characters themselves will probably be warped, as well. However, if FUNimation has enough control to keep the film fairly down to earth, we might have something more like X-Men, and not TMNT: The Movie. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Posted by Jess Horsley on March 13, 2002 09:38 PM
