Info in Movie News | The live-action Gundam adaptation from Legendary is finally gaining major momentum as the project inches closer to completing its main cast. After months of guessing and different internal plans, the studio is said to be looking at Noah Centineo to feature with Sydney Sweeney, thus making both actors the main characters of one of the most influential sci-fi universes of Japan.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Centineo is the one that the studio wants to have for the negotiations of a lead role that will be the main emotional core of the story. Sweeney, who got on board with the project earlier this year, is reportedly very engaged in choosing her co-star which indicates that the plot will revolve mainly around the interaction of their characters. The movie will probably depict a "Romeo & Juliet-style" love story amid a space fight, thus recapitulating the motifs that the fans of the Gundam series have already known for a long time.
Jim Mickle, whom most people know as the brain behind the Netflix's popular Sweet Tooth series, is the writer, director, and one of the producers of this movie along with Linda Moran under their Nightshade banner. Given his experience in storytelling that revolves around characters and in creating new worlds, Mickle is a very good fit to bring Gundam back not only to the local but to the worldwide fans but in an emotionally engaging and relatable way.
Since 2018, Legendary has been actively trying to get a live-action Gundam off the ground in collaboration with Bandai Namco Filmworks. The movie which was to be directed by Kong: Skull Island maker Jordan Vogt-Roberts and produced by Netflix has now parted ways with both director and Netflix. As per the new arrangement of production, the shooting of the movie is scheduled for the beginning of 2025.
Sweeney's character is the one that is most highlighted according to numerous sources and is also the one about which little information has been given. It looks like the studio has been very active in looking for a male lead and with Drew Starkey, Outer Banks, being the one they have mainly considered, but it is also said that negotiations have only recently broken off. While on the one hand, Centineo whose upcoming projects include Black Adam, The Recruit, and the soon-to-be-released Street Fighter movie has moved ahead of others on the list of candidates, on the other hand, his career is at a significant peak. Further, he will be playing the role of a young John Rambo in the prequel that is coming out soon.
The Gundam franchise made by Yoshiyuki Tomino, is based on the series Mobile Suit Gundam, which aired for the first time in 1979 and changed the mecha genre with its depiction of the military conflict being not only realistic but also with moral ambiguity instead of the usual good versus evil. This series is set in the Universal Century timeline in the future when mankind has already colonized space. After a long period of uneasy peace, a conflict breaks out that is to be fought with the use of the human-piloted mobile suits which are very large mechanized units among which the most famous one is the RX-78-2 Gundam.
Gundam has powered its way from just being an animated series to a franchise and then to a cultural force of nature. For over 50 years, Gundam has been kept alive by the numerous TV series and movies, the manga and novels, and the video games library. Gunpla, which stands for the plastic model kits of the mobile suits, is the main contributor to the franchise's hundreds of millions of dollars annual revenue and has transformed into a competitive sporting activity worldwide with championships, rare collector editions, and the communities that are prospering all over the world.
For Legendary, it is very important to find a strong leading duo. In general, live-action adaptations of popular Japanese IP have had a hard time in Hollywood, but Gundam is a different case as it mixes political drama, sci-fi spectacle, and character intimacy in a unique way. The movie can be combined to the portfolio of those which are highly probable to attract not only the general audience but also the fans' attention if Centineo is fused with Mickle, Sweeney, and the cast.
There has been no official announcement of the plot of the story, but the insiders hint at a narrative around two young characters who have grown up in a war and are each of the two sides, their lives becoming closely connected as the fighting intensifies. The idea closely matches the emotional core that is the Universal Century saga, which is known for putting its heroes in situations where they had to make choices between their duty, identity, and survival.
If the development pace is anything to go by, people are already expecting Gundam to be a major sci-fi movie event. The adaptation, with its mix of spectacle and character-driven tension plus arguably the most iconic robot design in the history of entertainment, is positioned as one of the most ambitious of Legendary’s projects.
In case Centineo agrees to be part of the project, the duo of Sydney Sweeney and Noah Centineo might become the emotional core that revolutionizes the concept of Gundam in the cinema, thus, creating a link with the past and at the same time, presenting the universe to countless new viewers.
Source The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, MovieWeb
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