Posts Tagged “Rumors”

There have been a couple of recent high-profile efforts in the works to adapt anime into American live-action films: the Wachowski-directed Speed Racer from last May; the James Wong-helmed Dragonball coming in April; and James Cameron’s pet project Battle Angel, which will be shot in 3-D once he’s done with Avatar. (No, not an adaption of the TV show – M. Night Shamalayan is directing THAT movie.) Well, prepare to add a very unlikely project to that list.

After trying to catch up on Heroes last night, I looked up Peter Petrelli’s actor Milo Ventimiglia on Wikipedia and saw that an anonymous user added a strange entry to his filmography on October 11th, namely that he could play Ban Mido in a 2010 Get Backers live-action film that is supposedly “in negotiations”. I have not been able to find any information online about a director, screenwriter, or other actors to substantiate this claim so please take this as a DEEPLY UNFOUNDED RUMOR and probably someone emulating Anime Insider’s Casting Call column…badly.

The only other set of edits made on the entire site by that user were performed three days earlier, when Christian Bale’s entry was altered to include an “in negotiations” Batman Concludes film with a 2010 release date. This misinformation was removed on October 21st, followed by an false addition of The Dark Knight Returns for 2011 by another user on Oct. 25, which was removed later that day by a superuser. There have been no official details revealed about a third film in the Batman reboot series aside from Warner Bros. President Jeff Robinov hoping it gets released by 2011 among many tent-pole superhero and other big-budget films over the next few years.

So I was looking through the revised, more fleshed out schedule for Anime Expo 2008 and found something interesting Friday night at 9PM in West Hall B (Live Panel 1) – something called “Geneon Premiers”. One might first think this is a typo and assume it will be a screening of Rondo Robe titles like ef – a tale of memories and Kamen no Maid Guy but I would take it more literally and think that corporate executives from the Japanese company might talk about titles they distribute (e.g. Hayate no Gotoku!, To Love-Ru, Allison & Lillia) among other stuff during those two hours.

Unfortunately, Justin Sevakis says in a post on the AOD forums that nothing will be happening at that time – he has seen an updated schedule of events and the live panels and most of the related screenings have been removed. I guess we’ll see in a few weeks and since I’m not really planning on going to AX Idol, I might try to emulate Geraldo in his Al Capone special with the hope there will actually be something in the metaphorical vault. If there really isn’t anything there, then there’s always fireworks displays.