My Hero Academia‘s new live-action film has found a director! It was first announced back in 2018 that Legendary Pictures was developing a live-action version of Kohei Horikoshi’s massively popular superhero action manga series for the West, but concrete details about its production have been kept under tight wraps since then. That has changed as Variety has reported that the film has gotten its director, and its one choice that will likely be a big hit with fans as this director has been behind some of the more successful live-action anime adaptations of the past few years.
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Variety reports that Shinsuke Sato, the director behind the live-action versions of Bleach, Inuyashiki, Kingdom, Gantz, and more has signed on to be the director for the live-action My Hero Academia film. This will be the film maker’s first English-language directorial effort. Unfortunately, no other details about the cast or script behind the series have been announced but it being an English-language debut for the director is a notable one.
Sato’s directorial efforts have been huge successes with fans thus far with the most recent being the release of Yasuhisa Hara’s Kingdom, which is currently in the midst of developing a sequel with Sato returning to direct, and the recent Alice in Borderland, the Netflix series adapting Haro Aso’s original manga series. That was such a hit with fans that a second season is now in the works for Netflix as well.
If you want a good idea of how Sato can tackle a Shonen Jump series, the Bleach live-action film was a pretty good indicator that Sato can take what works about the original and put that into a two hour format. There was hopes for more of these live-action films as well, but it seems that Sato might be moving onto My Hero Academia in their stead. As for the rest of the staff, when it was announced My Hero Academia’s live-action movie was noted to feature Alex Garcia and Jay Ashenfelter as producers for Legendary, Ryosuke Yoritomi coordinating for Shueisha, and TOHO is slated to distribute the movie in Japan.
My Hero Academia is also in the midst of taking over the world, so now is the perfect time to catch up. If you wanted to see what all the buzz is about, you can find My Hero Academia‘s anime now streaming with Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu. New chapters of Kohei Horikoshi’s original manga series are releasing on a weekly basis through Viz Media’s digital Shonen Jump library as well and the three most recent releases can be read entirely for free.
But what do you think of this choice of director for My Hero Academia’s live-action movie? What do you hope to see in this new take on the franchise? 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!
