Live-action adaptations of anime are a real gamble that rarely works out. Multiple companies want a part of the anime cash flow as the medium has increasingly become mainstream in Western countries. 2025 is predicted to be the biggest year for anime yet, and companies are trying several different avenues to profit from it. Turning animation into live-action has been a habit for Netflix and several large studios to draw in a larger crowd. Many people erroneously believe animation is a lower art form because animation is viewed as something for children. However, that is a fallacy on two fronts, because animations and children’s products can be high art.
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Nonetheless, since these live-action adaptations have sometimes made a profit, corporations will continue making them. Live-action adaptations of anime series have had a trickier reputation, especially for projects made by English-speaking production companies. Netflix has served as the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the prolific production companies in Hollywood, making several ventures into the potentially lucrative live-action anime pie. Netflix had announced multiple projects, including a live-action adaptation of My Hero Academia. Puzzling enough, no word on the My Hero Academia live-action series has been unveiled to the public since the project was officially announced in 2023.
[RELATED – Netflix Snags Major My Hero Academia Release]
Whatever Happened to the My Hero Academia Live-Action Series?
On the surface, My Hero Academia seems perfect for an English-speaking, live-action adaptation. The series is imbued with so much iconography lifted directly from American comic books that it feels tailor-made to be adapted for Americans in mind. Superhero culture is already huge in the United States thanks to movies and television, and a live-action My Hero Academia series would have fit right in at home on Netflix. Nevertheless, the series went dark almost immediately, with no major updates revealed since 2023.
Netflix has an uneven track record with live-action anime series. The company achieved the impossible and produced a relatively well-received live-action adaptation of One Piece, the over-the-top anime series starring a rubber boy. The live-action One Piece show may have detractors, but it fared better than most people imagined. However, while One Piece was a success, Netflix has had some huge blunders. The live-action Cowboy Bebop was a notorious misfire from the streaming service that cost a lot of money and was canceled after one season. The company may have been recalibrating how it handles its live-action series after suffering through some flops, perhaps most prominently Cowboy Bebop, explaining the silence on My Hero Academia.
These live-action anime are also infamously expensive, with no cheap workaround to convey the action and intensity displayed from animation. Netflix and its associated production companies needed to spend millions on the pirate ship sets and CGI for One Piece. Netflix may be scaling back certain projects as Hollywood has been in a state of panic for several years, brought on by studios’ miscalculations on streaming revenue, overspending, underpaying talent, and numerous other problems stemming from corporate greed.
There’s no cheap way to do a My Hero Academia series, where too many of the Quirks, AKA superpowers, would require a lot of CGI. My Hero Academia is likely no longer a priority for Netflix until the company can achieve more success, similar to that of the One Piece live-action show. If One Piece Season 2 becomes a hit, the other live-action projects Netflix has on the back burner may become viable again. It’s also possible the streaming company has been working on My Hero Academia quietly for the last two years, with the project still in the early stages of development.
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