This won’t be “just another” superhero movie!
On Tuesday, April 21st, entertainment outlet Variety broke the news that the hit manga series One Punch Man is getting the live-action Hollywood treatment with a feature film! According to the report, the movie is being produced by Avi Arad and Ari Arad of Arad Productions for Sony Pictures and has Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner (Venom, Jumanji) signed on as the writers. They provided no other details in the report but it was said that Sony is very high up on this property and sees this title as having franchise potential.
Created by ONE, One Punch Man started as a webcomic in 2009 before getting a full manga adaptation with art by Yusuke Murata in 2012. 21 volumes have been compiled and released in Japan as of December 2019 with nineteen of those volumes adapted into English by Viz Media as of March 2020.
In October 2015, the first season of the anime adaptation started airing with animation produced by famed studio Madhouse and Shingo Natsume sitting in the director’s chair working off scripts created by Tomohiro Suzuki. The second season of the anime started airing in April 2019 and featured animation produced by J.C. Staff and a new director, Chikara Sakurai.
Both the manga and anime series have been met with fan and critical acclaim around the world since launching. In 2014, the One Punch Man manga was nominated for the Manga Taisho Awards in Japan. In 2015, the English version of the manga was nominated for an Eisner Award and in 2016 the series received a Harvey Award. As of July 2019, the series had 20 million copies in print!
Viz Media describes the story as:
Every time a promising villain appears, Saitama beats the snot out of ’em with one punch! Can he finally find an opponent who can go toe-to-toe with him and give his life some meaning? Or is he doomed to a life of superpowered boredom?
