ANN got a correction today from ADV, who now declare that its Best Student Council and Robotech releases are still on the map. Which leaves the two discontinued series being 5 Centimeters per Second and Innocent Venus.
Now, I liked Student Council and all, but somehow this seems like the reverse of what I would have expected.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Akiva Goldsman (producer, Mr. & Mrs. Smith; writer, The Da Vinci Code) and Charles Roven (producer, The Dark Knight and Batman Begins) are joining Toby Maguire and Drew Crevello in producing the upcoming Robotech.
Also onboard to write is Lawrence Kasdan, who penned scripts for Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. And no, he had nothing to do with the Star Wars prequels or Indy 4. In other words, it could actually, y’know, be…good.
…It just wasn’t actually announced at the con! FUNi as announced that they’ll be releasing Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles on Blu-Ray on September 2nd. But wait, there’s more!
Featuring the definitive catalog of extras to date, FUNimation and Harmony Gold have held nothing back as the Blu-Ray release will contain 20 minutes of new extra features along with all the extras previously released on the standard and collector’s editions, including a featurette about the award-winning film’s creation called “Birth of a Sequel: The Making of The Shadow Chronicles.” New features include additional never-before-seen deleted scenes with directors commentary, outtakes, animatics and more.
Question, folks: now that Blu-Ray has more or less won the HD war, do you think it’s worth posting about things that get brought to the format? The announcements don’t come quite often enough for me to just round them up into one post regularly, I don’t think, but I am planning to start end-of-the-day round-ups again. Would you rather see these announcements there?
According to the Robotech Shrine blog, Harmony Gold may not be teaming up with FUNimation for the next flick Robotech: Shadow Rising, even though the two companies found some success with 2006’s Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles. Apparently the companies had a dispute over funding vs creative control: basically, FUNi wants more creative control in exchange for its funding, and Harmony Gold is like “oh no you didn’t!” and stuff.
Apparently the split isn’t yet definite, though. The changes required by FUNimation include switching to a Japanese animation studio and shared story/movie direction. So we’ll have to see what Harmony Gold does.
Wrote this between Dark Horse and Broccoli, so here you go: