As we all know, most of the comic book live-action dramas in the United States have been monopolized by DC and Marvel. Now, DC and Marvel seem to be unable to meet the needs of Hollywood, and Hollywood is focusing more and more on Japanese anime, and is willing to buy Japanese manga rights at a high price to prepare for remake into live-action film and television dramas. It can be said that Hollywood's film and television adaptation of Japanese comics has reached a high fever period, in addition to the "Death Note", "Ghost in the Shell", "Alita: Battle Angel" that have been put on the screen, "Akira", "Your Name". High-profile Japanese manga IPs such as "Naruto" have also been collected by Hollywood.
Recently, the performance of "Alita" on the screen makes people think that the Hollywood of Japanese comics finally has a work to get a hand, but in fact, before the release of "Alita", many people had doubts about the adaptation of this work. Judging from the previous car, Hollywood is not good at adapting Japanese comics, and it can even be said to be bad. Many of the works do not take into account the differences between Japanese and American cultures, but simply "Americanize" the story and characters. Countless patchwork special effects, awkward characters, and unrecognizable plots have been criticized and unacceptable by many fans of the original.
For example, in 2009, the live-action version of "Dragon Ball", which is known as the biggest "car accident" in the history of comic book reform, to the "Ghost in the Shell" that was later poor at the box office, and then there were several countries co-produced "The King of Fighters" and "Death Note" produced by Netfli, which were also changed to a mess and unbearable. Hollywood's long road of countless works "overturned", but the attempt is still tireless, what Japanese Hollywood works can we see now? In the future, what giant IP will meet with us, the Beijing News exclusive inventory summary, to comic fans an explanation.
A live-action version of the film has been adapted
In the 1990s, as Japanese game animation and manga and other subcultural content set off a boom around the world, some Hollywood production companies also aimed at this opportunity, with the continuous advancement of film technology, CG technology also began to approach the degree of "fake and real", Hollywood's Japanese manga adaptations also began to move towards high investment and large production.
Hollywood's choice of Japanese comics is often a sci-fi, action, and horror genre with the potential to become blockbusters. To some extent, this reflects its continuous exploration of multiculturalism and anxiety about the lack of subject matter. Hollywood hopes to use the world view of comics and the popularity of the original book to package visual effects and make it a global cultural product. However, in terms of box office performance, these Japanese comic adaptations are generally still in the trial and error stage, and have not explored a set of rational adaptation plans.
Dragon Ball (2009)
Director: Huang Yiyu
Starring: Justin Chatwin, Jamie Chung, James Masters
Douban score: 3.7
The Hollywoodization of Japanese comics did not make a good start in the beginning, so that the live-action version of "Dragon Ball" has always been regarded as a "super counterexample" on the road of comic changes, and the film has made a drastic and devastating adaptation of the original book.
In 2002, Jim Gianopoulos, chairman and CEO of 20th Century Fox Films, personally traveled to Japan to meet with the original author, Akira Toriyama, and obtained the film adaptation rights to Dragon Ball. After seven years, this highly anticipated and controversial American version of "Dragon Ball" met with the audience. Not only is the shape of Thunderman, the plot is even more difficult to describe, and the film has been badly reviewed after its release, with an IMDb score of 2.6 points and a Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating of 15%. The director's indiscriminate change of character settings, changes in the plot, change the background of the story, and expose hollywood's shortcomings of not handling the two cultural differences, this film full of American school drama style ushered in a one-sided bad review after the release, and seven years later, ben Ramsey, the screenwriter of the live-action version of "Dragon Ball", also published a thank you on his personal blog, apologizing to all the fans of "Dragon Ball".
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Director: Rupert Sanders
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Piru Esbek, Takeshi Kitano
Douban score: 6.4
In 2017, the high-profile Ghost in the Shell live-action movie became the biggest box office bomb of the year, "Ghost in the Shell" is Akane Shiro Masamune's 1989 manga, which has since been remade into animated series and animation by different directors, of which Mori Oshii in 1995 has the best reputation. Oshii's adaptation not only carried forward the original IP, but also established the status of Shiro's authentic "master of prophecy", and is considered to be the founding father of Japanese manga entering the Western market.
From the initial acquisition negotiations, the US version of "Ghost in the Shell" took more than a decade to come out, but many problems in the film also exposed the shortcomings of Hollywood's Japanese comic adaptations in recent years: excessive attention to the transmission of visual effects, while ignoring the narrative focus of the film. After its release in North America, word of mouth was not ideal, with IMDb only 6.9 points, Metacritic only 52 points, and less than $50 million at the box office. As for the Chinese film market, the film only grossed 200 million yuan and the global box office was only 160 million US dollars, which is a box office loss of more than 60 million US dollars for a Hollywood film with an investment of 110 million US dollars.
Death Note (2017)
Director: Adam Wengard
Starring: Knight Wolfe, Margaret Curry, Keith Stanfield
Douban score: 4.1
In 2017, Netflix's "Death Note" entered the public eye, which is another counterexample, it is reasonable to say that such a subject matter is very easy to shoot into a Hollywood movie, but the "net big" filmed by Netflix is surprising, the overly simple and direct story adaptation is completely completely without the life and death game between the two sides in the original work, coupled with the thick line of character shaping is really impossible to believe, the film's story framework and the Japanese version are basically the same, But the director stubbornly made the original high-IQ crime film into a dog-blood youth campus love film, which is also a huge rollover scene.
Alita (2019)
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christopher Waltz, Keane Johnson
Douban score: 7.6
From the very beginning of buying the rights to the classic Japanese science fiction manga "Dream" to finally putting the story on the big screen, it took producer James Cameron 20 years. Based on the global box office trend, "Alita: Battle Angel" has become another "big bet" in Hollywood on the Japanese comic IP after "Ghost in the Shell", based on the Japanese comic "Dream" adapted from "Alita", with years of technological innovation has become the most successful Japanese comic Hollywood work so far, from the current stage of box office performance and audience feedback, "Alita" does have a great breakthrough. While borrowing the original world view, it tells a more traditional "dystopian" story, which is closer to the general audience than other Hollywood japanese comic adaptations.
Detective Pikachu (2019)
Director: Rob Letterman
Starring: Justis Smith, Catherine Newton, Ryan Reynolds
Douban score: None
This year, the action-capture live-action Pikachu movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Ken Watanabe is also going to meet the audience, as the first live-action version of The Dream Treasure film has attracted much attention from the early stages of production, the film is directed by "Gulliver's Travels" and "Goosebumps" director Rob Lightman, responsible for the production of Legendary Pictures, the story is mainly about the mysterious disappearance of the son of a private detective and Pikachu together to solve the mystery, find the father, and then the yin and yang mistakenly discovered the bigger conspiracy.
North America is scheduled to be released on May 10. Judging from the details of the trailer, in addition to Pikachu, there will also be Pokémon such as Jenny Turtle, Super Dream, Magic Frog Seed, Fire Breathing Dragon, etc. On the whole, the furry Pikachu is still very cute, but some foreign audiences still question it, thinking that it is inconsistent with the original comic image.
The big IP that will be humanized in the future
Japanese comic IP in popularity, word of mouth and other aspects have a high degree of market recognition, but in Hollywood adaptation on the road quite controversial, the current birth of the box office performance is very dismal, the boutique is very few, such adaptations from becoming the world's popular cultural products such as the American comic adaptation, the prospect seems to be less clear. It seems that how to make Japanese comic adaptations from niche to the public and achieve global profitability at the box office, Hollywood's exploration is just the beginning. However, the attempt will not stop, for example, the next Hollywood adaptation of Japanese comics will appear in front of us.
Your Name. 》（2020）
Producer: Paramount, Bad Robot
Your Name. This Japanese animation directed by Makoto Shinkai, which caused a sensation when it was released in 2016, is currently ranked 4th in the history of Japanese film box office, and the work was introduced to the mainland in the same year, with a box office performance of 570 million yuan. In 2017, the copyright to the work was bought by Paramount and Bad Robot Productions. It is reported that the live-action version of the film is directed by Mark Webb, this live-action version of the background transplanted to North America, the protagonist is a young Native American woman living in a rural area and a young man from Chicago, the two found that they will intermittently exchange bodies.
Attack on Titan (schedule unknown)
Producer: Warner Bros
Attack on Titan is a juvenile manga serialized by Japanese manga artist Isayama, which has been serialized throughout Southeast Asia since its launch, and is not only kodansha's highest-grossing manga in more than a decade, but also one of japan's most prestigious manga in the past decade.
Early last year, Warner Bros. Pictures expressed interest in shooting a live-action version of Attack on Titan, and quickly set up a lineup, with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them producer David as producer and Argentine director Anders Muschetti directing, who in 2017 played a new trick with the horror film Joker Returns and became the highest-grossing horror movie of all time. Previously, Japan also launched two live-action movies in 2015, but almost received overwhelmingly bad reviews, it seems that breaking the dimensional wall still depends on Hollywood?
"Akira" (schedule unscheduled)
Akira, released in 1988, is the masterpiece of Japanese animation master Katsuhiro Otomo, which takes place 31 years after the destruction of Manhattan, when Kaneda, the leader of a group of speeding car teenagers, wants to save his friend Tetsuo from a medical experiment, but the latter has become a destruction machine. It is the only Asian film in the list of the best 20 science fiction films in the history of cinema selected by wired film publication Wired, and it is the only animated film among them. According to the data, Warner Bros. Pictures bought the remake rights of "Akira" in 2008, and experienced many changes of actors, screenwriters and directors, and the project stagnated again and again.
Naruto (schedule unscheduled)
Producer: Lionsgate Pictures
In 2015, Lionsgate Pictures said that it was going to be a film version of "Naruto", and now it is finally confirmed that Michael Gracey, the director who has directed "King of the Circus", participated in the production, and he said in an interview that although the progress is very slow, fans at least do not have to worry about the live-action version and the original work are completely incompatible, "Many Hollywood manga movies don't look quite right, but if I want to make a live-action version of "Naruto", I must cooperate with Kishimoto Kishimoto. In fact, when the news of the live-action was just announced in 2015, there were predictions that filming would begin in 2016 at the latest, and now two years have passed, and the director has even finished filming "The King of the Circus", "Naruto" is still far away, and it is estimated that everyone does not have much hope for this work.
Mobile Suit Gundam (schedule unknown)
Producer: Legendary Pictures
Launched in 1979, the Mobile Suit Gundam series became one of the most classics of sci-fi mecha animation and made Sunrise the best robot animation company in the industry. In addition, Gundam has also driven a huge derivatives market, allowing Sunrise to earn billions of dollars in peripheral merchandise revenue and licensing fees, including animated movies, video games, plastic models, toys and books. Last July, at the 2018 Animation Expo in Los Angeles, LegendAry Entertainment announced that it would partner with Japanese animation studio Sunrise Animation to develop a live-action version of gundam's film. In recent years, Legend has brought multiple Japanese classic IPs to Hollywood, the first live-action movie to be shot in the 40 years since Gundam was born. Recently, it has been rumored that the film has been confirmed to be directed by Ryan Lee. K. Vaughn is the screenwriter, Vaughn's previous screenwriting works include the American drama "Lost", "Under the Dome", "The League of The Runaway Children", etc., and he is also the screenwriter of the film "Silver Shadow Man" that Fox is developing. Although the legend has a good record under the adaptation of Japanese IP, many netizens can't help but worry that the live-action version of Gundam will be made into a remake of "Transformers".
"My Hero Academia" (schedule unscheduled)
Legendary Pictures recently announced plans to adapt the Japanese anime series My Hero Academia, which tells the story of a boy without any special abilities who dreams of becoming a superhero in a world where 80% of human beings have special abilities. This is another Hollywood two-dimensional live-action work after the movie "Detective Pikachu", and Toho Co., Ltd. will be responsible for the distribution of the Japanese side.
Beijing News reporter Teng Chao Editor Xu Qiaoyang Proofreading Zhao Lin Picture from the Internet