Way back in 2018, the J-List Blog reported Legendary was going to produce a Hollywood live-action movie version of the popular series My Hero Academia. Being that we’ve heard nary a peep about this project since that initial announcement, I had pretty much completely forgotten about the project altogether… until this past weekend when entertainment website Deadline revealed that not only is the project still moving forward but it has found its director.
And let me tell you, this project just got a serious dose of credibility.
The man chosen to helm this project might not be an obvious choice, nor is it someone who is a household name in the United States. In order to bring this project to life, Legendary has chosen the director/writer of the live-action Netflix series Alice in Borderland, Shinsuke Sato. It will be his English language film debut.
This feels like a good fit for the project. While there have been some successful live-action manga adaptations out of Hollywood over the last couple of decades, most of them have been pretty dreadful. By bringing on someone who has adapted multiple manga into successful live-action projects (I Am a Hero, Inuyashiki, Bleach, and Kingdom were all directed by Sato), this movie’s stock has risen just a little. It’s also worth noting that Legendary has already established that they too know what they are doing as they were the studio behind the successful Detective Pikachu movie.
Of course, it’s definitely still notable that most fans in Japan would rather Hollywood leave their favorite manga alone.
Created by Kohei Horikoshi and launched in Weekly Shonen Jump back in July 2014, the My Hero Academia manga series is up to 31 volumes in Japan as of August 2021, with multiple spinoff titles also in print. The series takes place in a world where 80% of the population has a superpower (or “quirk”). Izuku desperately wants to have a power too but was born quirk-less. That changes the day he meets his all-time favorite hero, All Might, and becomes his new protege, receiving a very special quirk. Now a hero in training, Izuku enrolls in the prestigious UA Academy and studies to become a professional hero alongside a multitude of other cast members.
Source: Deadline
