After several months of rumors, speculation, and other similar postings, we have confirmation from the Naruto/Boruto stage event at Jump Festa that Masashi Kishimoto, the original author of the Naruto manga, will be involved in the production of the upcoming live action Naruto movie.

 

As a reminder: the film will be directed by Michael Gracey, director for the upcoming film The Greatest Showman, with production by Avi and Ari Arad of Arad Productions and is being overseen by Erik Feig, Geoff Shaveitz and Kelly O'Malley.

 

Now, in general, American films based on anime have a bit of a, let's say, difficult reputation in the eyes of Western anime fans. As a fan of DragonBall, I know first hand what it's like to see one of your favorite properties be turned into a movie only for it to become something like DragonBall: Evolution, a movie that, to put it nicely, was... not good.

 

But, the fact that it's official that the original author has signed on to help with the film is at the very least a good sign. This at least promises that he'll have some input towards making the film and that his presence guarantees that at least someone behind-the-scenes will be working to keep the original source material in mind when making the film.

 

Of course, what it doesn't guarantee is that his involvement will have any lasting results as, unfortunately, a source creator can easily have their say denied in favor of Hollywood's own personal agenda. For those who don't know, that actually happened with Akira Toriyama and DragonBall: Evolution. He wasn't directly involved in the production, but he still sent in a script to FOX to use for the movie, and they outright rejected in favor of the script that you see being played out in the actual film.

 

But I would also like to stress that anime films don't necessarily have to be bad by design. Yes, we've gotten some stinkers in the past, but we shouldn't cast judgement right away. Edge of Tomorrow, a film based off All You Need Is Kill and starring Tom Cruise was well received, and we still the Ghost In The Shell film starring Scarlett Johansson set to premiere next year and despite some controversy about casting, that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be a good film.

 

So basically what I'm saying is not to be too optimistic nor too pessimistic either. We should just wait and see what the final result is. 

Edited December 17, 20168 yr by Firaga Sensei

Bleach live action, Naruto live action, DB live action. Where is the OP live action?

This is not going to stop the nervous sweating amongst the fanbase about another DB:Evolution happening.

 

However, one of DBE's major flaws was the complete disregard of the source material, so Kishimoto's involvement is expected to mitigate that a bit.

i wonder why people try to adapt cartoons/animation into live action. i mean right out the gate you know it's going to struggle to capture the feel of the original just because the original was made specifically for animation. the movements, actions, characters, etc were designed with animation in mind. there's a good chance it won't all translate well to live action and will just come off looking silly because what they want the characters to do will look unnatural for a real human. 

 

maybe they just don't do a good enough job of adapting the material to fit the real world. maybe sticking too close to the visual style of the source material is what hurts these films. but then if they stray too far from the source material in terms of designs and actions people will get upset, so idk.