Tatsunoko, Japan's legendary animation studio, can't seem to stop blowing away anime/videogame nuts like yours truly lately. Having recently joined forces with Capcom to unveil the Arcade fighter Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes, and then teaming up with contemporary asian studio, Madhouse, to announce the new anime series CASSHERN: SINS, today marks perhaps the biggest move in Tatsunoko's production history.

Science Ninja Team: Gatchaman, the ancient and first popular anime series to debut in the west during the 1970's, (dubbed and re-edited as Battle of the Planets & G-Force respectively), is currently being remade in partnership with Warner Brothers as a mega-budget all CG anime film.

Produced by Imagi, the Hong Kong animation studio responsible for last year's TMNT, Gatchaman will be a prequel to the original television series, and will sport a redesigned 'fresh' new look to it's signature characters and technology.




Gatchaman will be helmed by TMNT's writer/director Kevin Munroe, who gushed during the original press release:


Munroe has also stated how he plans to stay as close as possible to the original vision, but at the same time adding some sleekness to it, so that 'it’s not just tights'. He continues:




No information has been revealed yet about the movie's voice cast, and indeed, the film is likely to be still quite a way off from completion. Co-director Tom Tanaka has also gone on record stating how the film is planned to contain the original anime's darker elements, and hopes for a PG-13 rating upon final release.

There may however, be issues concerning the film's title, due to the American audience being more familiar with the Battle of the Planets/G-Force monicker (despite the film's intention to focus exclusively on the undiluted original Japanese series, Science Ninja Team: Gatchaman). The fact that Warner Brothers also have a Jerry Bruckheimer live-action movie, presently titled G-Force in the works, complicates matters even further.

Gatchaman is still however presently planned for a 2010 release in theatres worldwide.





It's already likely that hardcore Gatchaman fans would already know about this CG remake, so why the renewed interest all of a sudden?

....well, the answers pretty simple: actual footage of course!

It's disappointing to find out that Gatchaman was previously scheduled to debut in 2009, with it's first trailer revealed during Comic-Con last month. Obviously that didn't happen, probably because the creative team are following a 'it's-done-when-it's-done' mentality, to ensure a truly fantastic piece of modern digital film-making.

Now, whilst that trailer continues to remain under wraps over at Imagi HQ, the animation studio were kind enough yesterday to release a small 10-second clip from the end of said trailer.
The quality is not the best (video resolution was tiny), and it does not feature any characters or the story hints you'd expect from any normal teaser (it's just far too short), but it does give a strong indication of just how totally awesome the CG animation is likely to be. Joe's muscle car and the The Phoenix also make cameos during the short clip.

So, take a peek, and sample a little taste of what's expected to come when the full trailer is finally unveiled :]



Imagi Creative director Felix Ip has stated how they are still tweaking things, so what you see here may not be final.

...so how does this little snippet sit with thy reader, eh?

Expect more soon.