He's more used to seeing his own comic book stories being adapted, but Brian K. Vaughan is using the experience he gained on shows such as Lost and Under The Dome in writing a new movie based on someone else's work. He'll work on the script for Legendary's Gundam movie.
The film was announced at last year's Anime Expo, and the plan is to adapt the mech series originally created and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino in 1979, which took a while to catch on, but gained a massive following and spawned a toy line and various movies and shows. The key was giving the giant robot genre a human element that brought it some fresh scale and heart. "The original Gundam series is set in the Universal Century, an era in which humanity’s growing population has led people to emigrate to space colonies," read the synopsis at the time of the announcement. "Eventually, the people living in the colonies seek their autonomy, and launch a war of independence against the people living on Earth. Through the tragedies and discord arising from this human conflict, not only the maturation of the main character, but also the intentions of enemies and the surrounding people are sensitively depicted. The battles in the story, in which the characters pilot robots known as mobile suits, are wildly popular."
Gundam has influenced the likes of Pacific Rim, and the new film will form part of Vaughan's deal with Legendary. Outside of that, he's also an executive producer on the series based on his Y: The Last Man comics, which should be on screens next year.
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