Capcom is continuing to approve more screen adaptations of their video game properties, as they have announced that a live-action Mega Man movie has been greenlit for production.
Mega Man is being directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who both worked on Catfish and Paranormal Activity 3. The film will be produced by Masi Oka of Heroes in conjunction with Chernin Entertainment. There is no word on who will be starring in the film or what the story will be about.
The reason why Capcom has decided to move into the movie business may have something to do with the recent popularity of the Resident Evil film series.
Capcom has had a lot of success with their Resident Evil movie franchise, which has pulled in over a billion dollars at the box office. Capcom has already tapped the creators behind the Resident Evil movie franchise (most notably Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich) to work on a movie based on their Monster Hunter series.
If Monster Hunter wasn’t in development already, then Paul W. S. Anderson would probably be working on Mega Man, with Milla Jovovich playing Roll, who is suddenly the main character.
It was only a few years ago that the fans considered Mega Man to be a deceased franchise, with Mighty No. 9 promised as being his successor. The opposite would end up being true, with Mighty No. 9 being totally disregarded by the fans and the Mega Man series being revived in a big way.
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Mega Man hasn’t had the best luck with screen adaptations, with his gravel-voiced appearance in Captain N still etched into the minds of many. This is to say nothing of the Mega Man cartoon series from ‘94, although that did have an awesome theme song.
There is also an animated Mega Man series that is currently being broadcast, called Mega Man: Fully Charged, which initially received criticism due to its poor character designs and is mostly regarded as being a mediocre show.
The most worrying part of the Mega Man movie announcement is that the film is live-action. The cartoonish robot designs and futuristic setting of the Mega Man video games is something that works best in animated form and any attempt by Hollywood to make it more serious will only make it look more ridiculous.
