Astro Boy is becoming a real boy very soon.
The Hollywood Reporter reported on Wednesday that the Japanese manga character will be getting the live action treatment from Australia’s Animal Logic Entertainment and Japan’s Tezuka Productions. Animal Logic has most recently worked with animation on Avengers: Age of Ultron and The LEGO Movie.
Astro (Boy) is a robot boy created by a scientist as a replacement for the man’s dead son. After going on a Pinocchio-style adventure, he ends up with a new owner and a new mission: to fight evil (in human or robot form) using his many superpowers.
While the cartoons targeted a young demo, The Hollywood Reporter adds that Animal Logic is aiming to make a four-quadrant adventure movie tailor-made for the comic book movie age. No director is attached, but the producers are about to begin a search for writers.
Astro Boy was last seen in animation form in 2009 in a film starring Charlize Theron, Nicolas Cage, Freddie Highmore, and Donald Sutherland.