‘Astro Boy’ Movie Casting Begins
When the people of the future are in trouble, they turn to one thing to save them from the forces of evil -a tiny robot that doesn’t own a pair of pants and can deploy guns from his rear.
Astro Boy is being adapted into a big budget CG movie by Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Company and the titular character has already been cast. The voice of Astro Boy will be provided by Freddie Highmore.
Highmore is familiar to most film fans as Charlie Bucket from Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s no stranger to voice work either, as he recently provided the voice of Pantalaimon in The Golden Compass.
Astro Boy debuted as a manga in 1952 and became a television series in 1963. The character was created by Osamu Tezuka, considered the "god of manga" by some, and the television series was one of the first cartoons to use the anime asthetic.
The film version is slated for release in 2009 and is being scripted by Timothy Harris, the man responsible for Space Jam – the greatest movie to ever involve Michael Jordan and Bill Murray teaming up with cartoons to fight monsters from space. Astro Boy is in good hands.
(via CHUD)
How could anybody knock Space Jam? It's won over half a dozen awards including the Golden Satellite Award in '97 for best Picture, World Animation Award in 97 for Best Use of Animation in a Trailer, and best Young Artist Award for best Feature…how can anybody argue with accolades like that? Still not convinced? How about adding Wayne Knight to the cast? Your probably scouring iTunes downloading it right now…
Good call on Astro's voice, but come on: scripting by the man behind "Space Jam"? The world's biggest Nike shoe Ad? Surely they could've found SOMEONE better…