Hot on the heels of the live-action Speed Racer series news, we have yet another anime looking to make the leap to television screens in the west. In an announcement that first hit the internet on Thursday, June 2nd, Bandai Namco revealed that they have struck a deal to turn their original superhero series Tiger & Bunny into a Hollywood series. This is particularly interesting, as the original plans called for this series to get a Hollywood movie, but apparently, those plans fell apart over the last few years.
In the announcement, Bandai Namco revealed that they’ve teamed up with production company SK Global to produce the project. M. Raven Metzner will be serving as the scriptwriter and showrunner.
As mentioned, Tiger & Bunny was originally meant to be a movie that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment would’ve produced. According to the entertainment website Variety, however, that deal was allowed to lapse after one of the Japanese partners, ANEW, collapsed and was sold to another company. Unfortunately, there is no other information regarding this iteration of the project, such as casting or even a vague release window.
This is a big year for Tiger & Bunny. Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a second season that premiered on Netflix globally, the series is going through a renaissance period. It strikes me as particularly interesting since, while the series was easily one of the best of its time, it still never really took off around the world like I feel it was meant to.
Much like the sequel anime that I’ve yet to get around to watching, I am not convinced that this is new series is going to be particularly good. There is plenty of precedent for dark superhero stories to be successful (how many seasons of The Boys are we up to now?), but perhaps it’s best to remember Tiger & Bunny for what it’s already done rather than what some producers think it can be when it’s already past its prime.
Sources: MyAnimeList, Crunchyroll News, Variety
