There’s a number of genre cartoons that are currently in development to be made into feature films. The list includes Voltron, Thunder Cats, and Star Blazers, a Japanese anime show from the ‘70’s that became popular in America years later, much like Battle of the Planets.
Now Deadline tells us that Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter of The Usual Suspects and writer / director of Jack Reacher, is slated to direct the big screen adaptation of Star Blazers after he helms Mission: Impossible 5.
The Usual Suspects immediately put McQuarrie on the map as an A-list screenwriter, and it also won him an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Since then, McQuarrie’s been doing a lot of script doctor work, and has grown close to Tom Cruise, writing the script for Valkyrie, along with the aforementioned Jack Reacher.
McQuarrie was hired on to write Star Blazers back in 2011, and Deadline tells us the company resurrecting the property, Skydance, wants to create a Battlestar Galactica style franchise from it. Skydance also produced World War Z, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and the upcoming reboot of Jack Ryan, which will be released in January.
I’d love to see McQuarrie apply the imagination and sharp writing that made The Usual Suspects a classic to a cool sci-fi property like Star Blazers, and here’s hoping that’s what will happen.
