Whatever happened to that Gatchaman CG movie that was announced long ago?
Imagi was a new company based on Hong Kong that had amazing talent and their CG was topnotch even if they were new in the industry. This was a company I thought would be huge. After the announcement of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie for 2007 named TMNT they announced they were working on a movie based on the Gatchaman which was a classic Tatsunoko anime adapted twice for western audiences, first as Battle of the Planets and later as G-Force.
We first got a poster but then were treated with a trailer circa 2007 which is the one we see above and later we got another one circa 2009 which is the one we see below, with the movie aiming for a 2011 release. Sadly TMNT 2007 under performed int he cinemas and failed to get a sequel. The project kept getting delayed and eventually a movie based on the popular manga/anime character Astro Boy got priority for Imagi; This movie did even worse at the Box Office. Even though they also had a few smaller projects after having no real hits they ran out of money and went bankrupt.
It’s a shame that this movie was never able to released as it looked like a great take on the franchise and had very nice concept art and designs. Story wasn’t one of Imagi’s strong points however since both TMNT and Astro-Boy had rather generic stories but who knows if it would’ve been the same here. All we have from this movie is the two teasers and some concept art and video which you can see below.
