I’m starting to loose track of the amount of adaptions-of-anime going on in Japan.
Yamato? Check.
Gatchaman? Coming up.
Captain Harlock? Enjoy a badass trailer.
Patlabor? Coming.
I would like to make an interesting speculation.
You know how now and then I talk about live action anime adaptions here and elsewhere? About how Hollywood may someday adapt things? What it means for our careers?
What if we should ask not about American adaptions, but any adaptions?
First of all, Japan is on a tear doing anime adaptions to live action films, so you can guess there’s some properties that aren’t getting handed over to others. Considering the films will get runs elsewhere in the world (and be kept, well “Japanese”), why should the license some things? Why should we assume there will eventually be any big events over here?
Secondly, if Japan does liscence properties, we might not want to assume it’ll be to obvious sources. It may not be Hollywood – or certain companies. It might not be a movie when we think about it – or TV. There’s a lot of places in the world to license stuff – and different and growing markets.
Third, we shouldn’t assume that any licensing involves some of the disastrous handoffs we’ve seen in the past. There’s some pretty savvy adaptions done in Japan. There’s been some pretty bad films made. In a few cases propetty-owners may play it safe – or go different routes than expected.
I still think Hollywood will be more interested in Japanese properties, especially mecha after Pacific Rim. Hollywood is certainly bloody well out of ideas to judge by . . . er, well, everything.
But will Japan play ball and just hand stuff off? Not when they can do it themselves, or pick and choose among many places and film companies, and when there’s new media and opportunities.
It’s going to get interesting.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.