Legendary Entertainment is still working on a live-action adaptation of the classic anime, Gundam, and Sydney Sweeney could be one of its human stars.
The Japanese anime that launched a billion model kits, Gundam is currently being transformed into a live-action movie at Legendary Entertainment. It’s now being reported that the giant robot/mecha movie may have its first human star – Sydney Sweeney, who’s said to be in final talks to take a leading role according to Deadline.
Legendary’s been quietly building its Gundam film for at least four years now, with its original director announced as Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who previously made the monster movie Kong: Skull Island for the production company in 2017. In 2024, however, it was announced that Vogt-Roberts was out and indie filmmaker Jim Mickle was in. He’s perhaps best known for his acclaimed TV series Sweet Tooth, whose third season aired last year, though he’s also made a string of superb, small-scale genre movies, including Mulberry Street, Stake Land and We Are What We Are.
Our pick of the Mickles, though, is 2014’s Cold In July – a terrific neo-noir thriller starring Michael C Hall, Sam Shepard and Don Johnson. It’s loaded with atmosphere, suspense and bleak humour; you can currently rent it from several streaming services for about £1.99 in the UK. Consider this a hearty recommendation.
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A mildly interesting fact: Mickle was born in 1979, which is the year Mobile Suit Gundam first aired on TV in Japan. A weighty sci-fi saga about a future war involving gigantic robots piloted by humans, it wasn’t an immediate smash, but grew in popularity over time. Follow-up series and animated film spin-offs followed, and Gundam gradually blew up into a multimedia phenomenon, taking in novels, manga, toys and those aforementioned model kits.
The Gundam franchise is now thought to be worth $600m a year in combined sales, which explains why it will eventually join Legendary’s Monsterverse as another live-action franchise based on a Japanese property.
Mickle is said to both writing and directing the Gundam movie, though at present, nothing concrete has emerged about its plot or which of its sea of films and shows it’ll draw from. Gundam features some of the most iconic mecha designs ever created, though; if there’s one thing we’d hope Legendary won’t mess with too much, it’s the big, stompy robots.
We’ll bring you more as we hear it.
Picture credit: Wikimedia commons. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: JuneAugust.
