Ah yes, the dreaded news that comes with nearly every popular anime franchise gets: a studio bought the rights to the show and is planning on making a live-action remake. And while scares for Cowboy Bebop and Akira have come and gone, there’s a new contender for one of these, the ever popular My Hero Academia.
Studio Legendary bought the rights to and will produce a live-action feature film based on this franchise, though there are very few details more than that. Alex Garcia and Jay Ashenfelter overseeing the project for Legendary, and Ryosuke Yoritomi spearhead the project for Shueisha, the publisher of Shonen Jump Weekly.
If you haven’t looked into the show, it follows Izuku Midoriya a young boy who is powerless in a world where most people have some preternatural power, called a quirk. The most powerful of these quirk-havers become super heroes or villains, who go on to duke it out in the real world. Midoriya’s favorite hero, a super-man named All Might, see the potential in him and lets him in on a secret – All Might’s power isn’t something he was born with, but rather a gift that was given. He names Midoriya as his successor and the young man with new powers goes off to a super-powered high school to train and become the hero he always wanted to be.
The show just finished its third season in September, with a fourth season already confirmed, and an animated feature film, My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, on the way. Still, fans will likely have mixed feelings about the news, given how most Western studios have failed to adapt anime faithfully, or even competently. Still, we’ll have to see if Legendary goes through with it or if they pull back at the last minute like so many other proposed projects.
