James Wan, the guy who directed Saw and is credited for creating that franchise’s creepy Billy the Puppet, is in talks to direct a live-action film adaptation of Robotech. Wan, who recently helmed Furious 7, would be paired with 300 and G.I. Joe screenwriter Michael Gordon for the film.
For the uninitiated, the Japanese import Robotech franchise spanned television, films, toy lines, RPGs, and video games and chronicled the crash landing of a massive alien ship that can create wormholes. Although they benefitted from the ship’s futuristic robot technology, mankind found themselves at odds with waves of attacking alien forces. The U.S. version of the original show is actually a cobbling together of three smaller series, assembled, re-edited, and redubbed to meet stateside syndication requirements. In other words, the Robotech franchise was repackaged and over-stuffed to generated more content, storyline and revenue, not unlike the Saw franchise.
If a live-action adaptation is successful, Robotech could please fans of the original franchise, while also giving Transformers fans something they’ve long been craving: a movie about transformable robots locked in combat that has nothing to do with Michael Bay.