The popular anime and videogame series Dragonball is about to go live on the silver screen. No joke. In fact, actress Jamie Chung has just been casted as Goku’s love interest, Chi Chi, and will join Justin Chatwin (Goku) and James Marsters (Piccolo) have already been casted in the live-action adaptation of the popular Japanese comic Dragonball.
The film will be produced by Stephen Chow, a successful Japanese cultural export of all time, and directed by James Wong. The setting of this film is a science fiction action-adventure that will center on an adult humanoid alien named Goku who, after discovering he was sent to Earth to destroy the population, tries to fulfill the wish of his dying grandfather and collect all seven of the world’s mystical Dragon Balls to keep them out of the hands of the evil aliens.
Fans of the game and anime franchise already know the back story of the series and I’m sure will be cautious about the live action release for fear of disappointment. And who wouldn’t, the series has grown since its first release in Japan.
The anime was just kicking off in 1986 and so was the video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System produced by Bandai and exported to the US as Dragon Power, a martial arts game that followed the plot of the first thirteen chapters of the anime series. It didn’t last long and soon it faded away. So did the anime release in 1989 with a limited number of episodes created from editing the first and third movie release from Japan and poorly dubbed by Harmony Gold.
It wouldn’t be until 1996 when the company FUNimation Entertainment bought the rights to all the US releases of the Dragon Ball series and tried to revive the series. But due to financial reasons they decided to team up with Kidmark Entertainment and hired voice actors of the Ocean Group to handle the dubbing. But after the thirteenth episode it was canceled due to poor ratings.
Just when it looked like Dragonball would never become a success, it gained new life on August 1998 on Cartoon Network’s action-animation block Toonami and the games, comics, toys and animated movies became a hit ever since. So its only natural that a director would want to create a live action version of the popular series and why not with all the technology available today. Had they done so in 1996, we would have ended up with something as goofy as the Power Rangers.
it's still going to look goofy now with all their caucasian cast and americanization of the story, even with all the modern technology people round the world especially in japan are boycotting it
Yeah. I've just recently watched a trailer for it on youtube. I'm … almost afraid of what its going to be like. Some anime lose their "magic" when they go live action. *cough* Aeon Flux *cough* Speed Racer *cough*