As many of you may have heard, early this year a live action adaptation of popular manga and anime Bleach was announced. The rights were bought by Warner Bros and it will be written by Dan Mazeau, the screenwriter for Wrath of the Titans. It will be produced, and possibly directed by Peter Segal who worked on films such as Get Smart and Longest Yard. Not a lot of information is given on the project, apart from this and that it will be filmed in Japan – not even a release date. But to be quite frank, I’m not looking forward to this at all. We all know that video game and anime adaptations are iffy at best. And after the abomination that was Dragonball Evolution, the faith of many an otaku in Hollywood was shattered. Mazeau mentioned that he wanted to stick to the source material, and was in talks with series creator Tite Kubo to see how to best manage things, but what they fail to realize is that this is only one of the many problems associated with adaptations. Simply put – the characters won’t look right. The hair, the eyes, everything. At best, they’ll look like cosplayers.
Not to mention the difficulty of replicating the kind of effects that take place in the show. Unless they have a really high budget, the special effects are going to look pretty tacky, like a 1980’s B movie. But hey, Warner Bros. is a pretty big studio, who knows? I’m skeptical, myself. If it were up to me, I’d scratch the film, and continue the anime…
What are your thoughts on this film? Excited? Skeptical too? Comment and let us know!
