Interest

Long-lost Animation Sequences from Defunct Gatchaman Movie

Slashfilm recently picked up on an interesting tip about an animated sequence from the CGI-animated Gatchaman movie that never was.

Back in the late 2000s, Hong Kong animation studio IMAGI Studios (you may remember their name from such works as the 2007 TMNT movie released stateside by Warner Bros. Pictures, and the 2008 Highlander: The Search for Vengeance anime co-pro with Madhouse Studio) started working on a CGI-animated Gatchaman feature, which was to be released with Warner Bros. They even created this trailer. For whatever reason, though, the movie was cancelled, and no one spoke of it ever again.

Until now, really. Earlier this summer, previous IMAGI Head of Layout and DP Adam Holmes uploaded a few pieces of animation from the defunct Gatchaman project, in various stages of production.

Available is a previsualization of a car chase from the film:

And an animation demo that has some more completed scenes and character tests:

Also available on YouTube is an animatic for the movie, uploaded by previous IMAGI storyboarder TomNelsonStoryboard:

Maybe more will eventually surface. Until then, we can only just imagine what this movie would've been like.

[Via Slashfilm]