'TMNT' and 'Astro Boy' Studio Stops Making Movies

Imagi International, the company that backed a couple animated flicks in the past three years, has tapped out. "No mas," said the Hong Kong-based company, although probably not in Spanish.

The studio most recently produced Astro Boy, and that's about all you need to know, really. People just didn't warm up to it. I suspect it might have had something to do with the main character dying in the opening scene. Whatever the reason - either that or stateside unfamiliarity with the character or both - Imagi lost about $40 million on Astro Boy, even though its 2007 TMNT made a bit of money.

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Movie Review - 'Astro Boy'

Astro Boy Starring Freddie Highmore, Nicolas Cage, and Kristen Bell Directed by David Bowers Rated PG

There's a considerable amount of unexpected drama in the first act of Astro Boy. I suppose in retrospect, Example A is compatible with the story. But the second surprise really is one of those things you don't see coming. If the rest of the film was up to that standard, then we'd have something. As it is, though, this is a Pinocchio story with a mad scientist angle. Both of those are fine, and where they connect fits together pretty well, but what surrounds them offers very little to get excited about. For the uninitiated, Astro Boy is kind of like Japan's Mickey Mouse. The character has been big business there for about half a century, and a few products featuring the character have made it stateside, but not ever in an official, go- for-broke kind of way. This film is intended for American audiences, with American humor and voice actors, so there's no real culture shock involved as with, say, Pokemon, the first time you saw it. The main character is a robot implanted with the memories of a human boy (Freddie Highmore). The inventor/father is Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), but the robot, as lifelike as it is, is merely that: Lifelike, not alive. Not to Dr. Tenma, anyway. The robot finds himself discarded from Metro City, the only place to survive the pollution and overpopulation of the planet by jettisoning itself about a mile above the surface. On the surface, Astro meets some young vagabonds who scour the countryside in search of broken down robot parts for their ringleader, a strange, seemingly benevolent deposed Metro City scientist named Ham Egg (Nathan Lane). Ham Egg rebuilds the robots, but only to fight each other for the amusement of the citizens left behind when Metro City made its ascension. You can sense the conflict from here, can't you?

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A New Trailer for 'Astro Boy' Takes Off

There's a new trailer for Astro Boy from Summit Entertainment, better known as the house that Twilight built. For its first foray into the crowded and competitive animation market, Summit has chosen a property with a tremendous and decades-long track record. Unfortunately, most of its advocates are in Japan.

There, Astro Boy is legendary. In the United States, the world's most important movie market, it's more of an unknown. So the trailers are key to rounding up potential ticket buyers here in the states. And because Summit wisely got a great cast of voice actors as part of its reported $40 million budget, the studio can send Nic Cage, Charlize Theron, Kristen Bell, and Samuel L. Jackson on talk shows and hope for a good payoff from that, as well. The trailer looks good, and it's different enough from the stuff we've seen this year that maybe there's a void it can fill:

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Japanese 'Astro Boy' Teaser Trailer

So Dragonball isn't a hit in the U.S., unless you count $5 million in four days a good run at the box office, and that raises a question about how well the upcoming Astro Boy might do here stateside. Because it's a long-running Japanese property, it's hard to predict what kind of performance it will generate. Don't forget: Speed Racer is also from the Land of the Rising Sun.

So, taking the money off the table, this Japanese teaser trailer for Astro Boy looks damn cool, so long as you're open to re-experiencing childlike wonder that has probably long since been replaced by urban cynicism. But I wonder if this is a corner turner for anyone a little resistant to Americanized foreign phenomena. But since it's in Japanese, this is probably a home run for its intended audience.

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First 'Astro Boy' Poster Blasts Off

From Summit Entertainment (via MTV's Splashpage) comes the first teaser poster for this fall's Astro Boy. I'm frankly surprised that it's taken something like 50 years to bring the character to the big screen. He's a Japanese manga icon who is kind of the granddaddy of anime.

The new film version - which is heading our way in 3-D and could be another big win for Summit, the studio du juor - will feature the voices of Nic Cage, Kristen Bell, and Freddie Highmore. There had been rumors that the project was going on hold or might be scrapped altogether, something having to do with the animation studio, I think, but it's still on track for October 23rd. Here's the new poster, which unfortunately, reminded me of Bicentennial Man. I'm sure it wasn't intentional.

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