Someone's working on an American Berserk screenplay

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-11-27/california-university-offers-class-on-manga-publishing

Starting in January, the UC Irvine Extension program in California will be offering the third class in a series on the business of anime and manga in the United States. "Manga and Anime Explosion: Finishing and Publishing Your Manga" will be a five-session class designed to teach students about the manga publishing and rights management business. Previous courses in the series included an introduction to anime and manga and a class on story development.

"Manga and Anime Explosion" will again be taught by Northrop Davis, a screenwriter and director of commercials whose accomplishments include creating the pitch that made James Camero interested in filming a live-action version of Battle Angel Alita. He is also currently writing the screenplay for an American adaptation of the Berserk manga and executive-producing an English-language take on the Japanese television series Trainman.

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My apologies if his is old news. This story was posted on ANN today and I thought it might be of mild interest. I'm not sure how much influence this guy has, but if he's behind the Battle Angel Alita movie...

So its being written by a guy who teaches MANGA AND ANIME EXPLOSION? Yessss!

coolerimmortal said:

"Manga and Anime Explosion" will again be taught by Northrop Davis, a screenwriter and director of commercials whose accomplishments include creating the pitch that made James Camero interested in filming a live-action version of Battle Angel Alita.

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Also, did you mean THE James Camero? The same James Camero who made Terminato Too?

Sorry it's just hard for me to take any of these pitches seriously until it has a financial backer.

Well, the simple fact they're calling it "Battle Angel Alita" is already a bad point for anybody involved as it's nothing but a really stupid choice of a title. Anyway, going by the original announcement, and assuming what it says is true, what he's doing seems relatively unclear... A remake of the TV series? An adaptation of the manga? Their wording makes it look like "and Berserk manga" was tacked on at the end of the sentence without much thought. We don't even know what the medium is supposed to be.

Northrop Davis, M.F.A., is a professional screenwriter and producer. A graduate of CalArts and Duke University, he presented "Battle Angel Alita" to 20th Century Fox, which acquired it for James Cameron. He's currently executive producing a remake of the Japanese hit TV how "Train Man" and "Berserk" manga (also screenwriter).

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Can't say I'm very excited by this to be honest, whether he's "worked" with the 20th Century Fox or not. Besides, so far this only seems to be an unconfirmed project.

IMDB pops nothing on this guy. And google says he's sold 3 pitches to "major motion picture studios".

Yea I can't say this is something to get excited over.

There's something I find funny about what it says on the UC Irvine site concerning this course: they talk about how nowadays Hollywood makes live-action movies from manga while it was completely unknown as a genre 10 years ago, and cites "Transformers" and "Speed Racer" as examples. Only the main reason people are making movies from these franchises is because lots of people used to watch them on TV when they were kids... And was there even a Transformers manga anyway? Can it be called so when it was originally a toy line made in America?

Aazealh said:

Well, the simple fact they're calling it "Battle Angel Alita" is already a bad point for anybody involved as it's nothing but a really stupid choice of a title. Anyway, going by

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They aren't. It's called Battle Angel.

coolerimmortal said:

They aren't. It's called Battle Angel.

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Big difference here, that completely changes my point.

Are you saying they should call it Gunnm? the english speaking world has pretty much known it as "Battle Angel Alita".

A.C said:

Are you saying they should call it Gunnm? the english speaking world has pretty much known it as "Battle Angel Alita".

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Yes I am. Anybody that cares enough about the series should know what the real title is by now, so this isn't a reason to stick by some old localization that never really made any sense. There's no excuse for it, and in fact it's pretty appalling that the manga publisher hasn't republished the whole series with a new translation already.

Pretty sure the main character's name isn't actually Alita either... So, let's just be glad Dark Horse didn't deliver us with: Berserker Soldier GAT-TSU.

Walter said:

Pretty sure the main character's name isn't actually Alita either... So, let's just be glad Dark Horse didn't deliver us with: Berserker Soldier GAT-TSU.

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It's Gally, originally.

Aazealh said:

And was there even a Transformers manga anyway? Can it be called so when it was originally a toy line made in America?

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No, there was never much manga for Transformers. There was a one-shot in TV Magazine around 1990, supporting Takara's last gasp of Japanese G1, when it wasn't worth making another cartoon series. The first couple lines of Transformers were from other Japanese toylines, though, and almost all of the new toys were produced as a joint effort between Takara and Hasbro.

The pop culture imprint of Transformers - the show and the comics - is very American though. There have been a bunch of Japanese cartoons for it, from the late 80s up through now, but to put it bluntly they all pretty much suck big time.

Aazealh said:

And was there even a Transformers manga anyway? Can it be called so when it was originally a toy line made in America?

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Weirdly enough I was looking in a dictionnary (a french one) and I suddenly found the term manga and to my big surprise they said in the definition that a manga is a japanese comic or animation?!?! what the fuck, since when is it consider also an animation?! dont we just say a japanese animation instead?! enlightened me here please! and the dictionnary was a 2006 version too! did they change the meaning of the word?

jackson_hurley said:

Weirdly enough I was looking in a dictionnary (a french one) and I suddenly found the term manga and to my big surprise they said in the definition that a manga is a japanese comic or animation?!?! what the fuck, since when is it consider also an animation?! dont we just say a japanese animation instead?! enlightened me here please! and the dictionnary was a 2006 version too! did they change the meaning of the word?

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The Japanese word still has the same meaning as ever and refers specifically to printed cartoons or comics, not to animated material. I guess the writers of the dictionary you bought either didn't do proper research (which unfortunately happens more often than one would think) or just decided to list this improper use of the word because it is common, without specifying that it is improper and should be avoided.

Aazealh said:

The Japanese word still has the same meaning as ever and refers specifically to printed cartoons or comics, not to animated material. I guess the writers of the dictionary you bought either didn't do proper research (which unfortunately happens more often than one would think) or just decided to list this improper use of the word because it is common, without specifying that it is improper and should be avoided.

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aah i see makes sense, dumb though! thx as always aaz for the info!

Battle Angel.... okie doke.... they should really go all out and call it Super Future Kamikaze Death Battle 4065!

Now I can chalk up another name in the "It'll be great if they actually go through with this" category along with the Halo movie, a GOOD Dragonball or Dragonball Z flick(the one with James Marsters as Piccolo will probably flop) and now a Berserk screenplay, I'll take the odds of this happening to be about 10:1, but then again I'm cynical at times, but does anyone agree?

Guts intestines said:

does anyone agree?

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That it would be good? No, definitely not.

Just imagining all the possible cuts they'd make is gag inducing .

Not to mention the whole issue of having the main character called GUTS.. The English speaking audience would love that, I'm sure.
Heck pronouncing it Gat-su like in the Berserk Dubs, wouldn't be any better.

I hope they don't make a movie. It would suck. Ova's would be best, once the entire storyline is complete. Although.. I could picture a LotR style trilogy. The first movie would start like the first few volumes and end with the eclipse. (just to F#ck with the audience that have not read the manga) The second movie would include everything after the eclipse up until Griffith's rebirth or until the hill of swords. The third movie would contain everything after up until the end. Now if Berserk goes on for another 30 volumes we might have a problem, and it would becomes a 5-10 part movie. Dear god that would suck in one sitting. Personally I wouldn't even care if they edited out a few things. We wouldn't need close ups of brain matter flying at the camera. it would be a bloody movie of course but for the sake of the audience that could be toned down slightly without killing Berserk. I think the most important thing would be conveying the human aspects of the characters.

My vote still goes for not making a movie. However if one was made, I would watch it. Even if it was utter Sh1t.

Yeah, instead of the Femto rape we might have him giving Casca a sultry kiss instead, or they won't show the rape at all not that I want to see it, but its interesting to think how anyone trying to make something as mainstream as a movie would try to approach such a scene. And I am considering that rape has been shown on silver screen before, but would someone risk out cry with a movie that would need acceptance in order to gain success for any sequels?

Well of all the rape scenes I think Femto's rape of Caska is the most important to the storyline. The troll rape scenes could be edited in a way, were they are not shown.. only implied by sounds or speech. The best way to edit the Eclipse rape scene would be if Femto covers the actual.. content with his wings. Then we would watch Caska's face doing .. well you know, Femto's face - looking at Guts and Guts looking at the whole thing.
The kings attempted rape of Charlotte could also be edited. So he is just trying to rip her clothes off. Wyalds scene .. well I really don't know.

From a emotional trauma aspect, yes the scenes are quite important. However I think the story could relatively keep its integrity with a content edit of the scenes. The last thing they should do is completely remove the scenes. That really would kill the integrity.

I'd take a continuation of the Anime series over any other adaptation, even if they had to fudge a few things to sneak in characters that were omitted from the first 24 episodes.

Oh, of course hell I wouldn't mind if they said forget the last one and here's what really happened and made a flashback showing what happened during the eclipse, this time true to the manga. Then when it picks up you have them being saved by SK. Of course they'd probably have to redo the whole Blackswordsman Count stuff to include Puck, but hey what the hell. And a little off topic, but I wouldn't mind if the show Inuyasha was finished now that the Manga's done.

Didn't know whether to start a new thread or just resurrect this one - but it seems like an update to this thread, same dude involved Northrop.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-08-18/berserk-baki-barefoot-gen-pitched-to-hollywood

Bottom line it isn't close to being greenlit yet. But if Battle Angel is a great success...hold on to your beherit. We could probably see a flood of live action anime, akin to the comic book movie explosion.