Gantz Live-Action Movie in Development With Overlord Director

A new live-action movie based on Hiroya Oku's Gantz is now in development, and Overlord director Julius Avery has signed on to helm the new project! Oku's original manga first made its debut in the pages of Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump back in the 2000s, and quickly took off with fans due to its otherworldly, death game like concept. The series came to an end in 2013, but has since sparked not only some official sequels and spin-offs, but a few anime, CG animated, and live-action movie adaptations as well. 

According to a new report from Deadline, Sony Pictures is currently developing a new live-action movie based on Gantz with Marc Guggenheim set to adapt the script (which falls in line with earlier reports of its development last Fall) and Temple Hill set to produce. According to the report, the project is still in early development and so date has been set for the start of production just yet. But for fans of the original, thankfully there are many ways to check out the series for yourself with its anime streaming with Funimation.

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(Photo: Shueisha)

Funny enough, series creator Hiroya Oku has previously gone on record noting that there was a "Hollywood" contract in place keeping the creator from pursuing a new anime adaptation of the project. Speaking with Crunchyroll earlier this year, Oku had stated that "Yeah, I can't talk about all the details on that subject, but a Hollywood company does have the rights to adapt Gantz at the moment, and unless they return us the rights, we won't be able to make either an anime or live-action adaptation of the manga." Oku began. "That's the Hollywood type of contract; they own all the adaptations including anime and live-action, except for manga." 

Oku had noted that the contract he had signed was going to be available for about four more years (from the time of the interview) and revealed it was a "pain" that even the sequels and spin-offs could not have an anime developed for them either. But this was all during the delays from the COVID pandemic, and thus could shake up whether or not a new Gantz movie is actually moving forward. 

But what do you think? What would you want to see from Sony Pictures' take on Gantz? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

HT - Deadline 

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