Space Brothers to Become Full-Length Animated Film with Entirely New Story Written by Chūya Koyama

It has been announced that Space Brothers, currently airing on Yomiuri TV and Nippon TV, will be made into an animated film to release theatrically. The film will be released by Warner Bros. countrywide in Japan in summer 2014. Other big hits this year by Warner Bros. include Gintama: The Movie: The Final Chapter: Be Forever Yorozuya and Madoka Magica the Movie: Rebellion. It seems there will be large-scale promotions for this film as well.

The film will tell an entirely new story written by original author Chūya Koyama. Directing the film is Ayumu Watanabe who also directs the TV anime. While at Shin-Ei Animation, Watanabe worked on many of the films in the Doraemon series. As such, he has ample achievements in film. We look forward to seeing how the story will unfold.

Producing the animation for the film is A-1 Pictures, which also works on the TV anime. Hiroaki Hirata and Kenn will bring their passionate performances to the big screen as the main characters Mutta Nanba and Hibito Nanba, respectively. Syncing up with the announcement of the film, a special site has opened. Make sure to check this out for the newest information from here on (available in Japanese only).

The manga for Space Brothers began serialization in Morning in 2008. The work has grown to become extremely popular, which over 14 million copies of the individual volumes and related publications being sold to date. It has also acquired high acclaim, having won both the Kodansha Manga Award and the Shogakukan Manga Award in 2011. In April 2012, the TV anime began broadcasting, and in May of that year, a live-action movie based on the series was released. Both of these concurrent projects picked up attention, and the movie earned more than 1.5 billion yen in box office revenue. The TV anime, which has become a long series spanning more than 80 episodes, is still broadcasting. The anime airs in the 5 p.m. timeslot every Sunday and is widely known even by general TV audiences. It seems we can expect this long-awaited animated film to be just as big a hit as the live-action film was.

[ Space Brothers Official Movie Site]http://www.uchukyodai-movie.com

Source: animeanime
Source article written by Katsunori Takahashi