It shouldn’t be surprising that the announcement that Hollywood is making a live-action Attack on Titan movie has been met with heavy skepticism by fans of the manga and anime. Hollywood has a pretty disastrous history with taking on anime adaptations, and like with video game movie adaptations, there is now a heavy stigma hanging over the live-action anime movie genre.

That said: Attack on Titan may actually be the anime adaptation that both Hollywood and fans have been waiting for, and one that finally break the live-action anime movie curse. Here’s how:

Casting

Let’s start with the biggest thing that kills most Hollywood live-action anime movies before the ever have a chance: seeing the Japanese cultural themes and characters “whitewashed” into westernized versions of themselves. The controversy over whitewash casting has dealt series blows to big-budget anime adaptations like Scarlett Johansson’s Ghost in the Shell, or Netflix’s Death Note movie, with fans of the anime source material often boycotting the “whitewashed” version, and/or stirring up similar sentiments of protest via social media.

Well, Attack on Titan is uniquely suited to overcome the problem of being “whitewashed” when Hollywood adapts it, as the series is almost completely populated with characters who are indisputably white. In fact, there is only one (living) character in the entire series who is considered to be Asian: Mikasa, the adopted sister of main character Eren Jaeger, and the last remaining member of the “Oriental Clan,” which is Attack on Titan‘s not-so-subtle version of the Asian race’s remnants in the new world order of life behind the walls. Mikasa’s role as one of the most badass warriors in the Scout Regiment will be a great casting opportunity for a talented Asian actress; the rest of the characters can be chosen from a crop of young Hollywood stars that could easily help mainstream American crowds to discover Attack on Titan.

Premise

Once American crowds have some star power to pique their interests, the premise of Attack on Titan should be enough to to hook it. The series is a fantastic mix of sci-fi/fantasy, horror, and action – all of which have become some of the most lucrative genres in modern cinema. Once fans get to see the actual live-action big-budget visuals of titans on the attack, and the very Rated-R scene of a titan tearing a human apart and eating him/her, it will definitely provide the unique world (sci-fi/fantasy) and shock-and-awe moment (horror) that makes audiences take notice.

Action

Sure, the unique worldbuilding will appeal to sci-fi and fantasy movie fans, and the monstrous titans and their gruesome attacks will get the horror crowds on board. However, a Hollywood Attack on Titan movie will also provide plenty for once the superhero movie/action crowd, such as scenes of the specially powered Nine Titans battling it out, or the Scout Regiment and their human foes doing battle with 3D maneuvering gear that’s a signature of the series.

Indeed, sequences of 3D-maneuvering battles are one thing that make Attack on Titan wholly unique, and the chance to do it in live-action on a Hollywood budget is a massive opportunity to create action visuals that are entirely novel and buzzworthy. If a first trailer for Attack on Titan can’t spark hype from that, then the movie has already failed at one of its primary goals.

Director

The news that IT movie’s Andy Muschietti is directing Attack on Titan has already been a positive indicator for a lot of skeptical fans. After breaking onto the scene with the novel horror tale Mama, Muschietti took on the monumental challenge of adapting Stephen King’s IT into a big-budget Hollywood movie, and knocked it out of the park. IT was a hit with hardcore King fans and mainstream moviegoers alike, earning record profits for a horror movie, to the tune of $700M worldwide. Now, IT: Chapter 2 has an even bigger cast of stars, and is already poised to be one of the biggest films of 2019.

Muschietti gets praise for “getting horror” and what scares people, and creates a vibrantly dark visual aesthetic to his work. That’s important, as this Attack on Titan movie will hinge on the visual design of the titan monsters. Muschietti has also proven with IT that he has the ability to take dense and complicated source material and streamline it into a blockbuster movie that both makes things clear to viewers, and still captures the core essence of the source material. Taken altogether, that’s a pretty great set of skills to bring to an Attack on Titan movie; Muschietti would even know how properly chop up the anime volumes into something like a trilogy of movies, and make each one feel fully realized as a standalone.

Those are the reasons we believe anime fans have good reason to be both excited and hopeful that Hollywood’s Attack on Titan can get right what so many of its predecessors got wrong. Do you agree? Or are you still skeptical? Let us know in the comments!

Attack on Titan‘s sub series has been streaming Season Three on Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu, but is now on hiatus until 2019. The Dub series airs Saturday nights on Adult Swim’s Toonami block.