G4 Presents San Diego Comic-Con 2008

G4 Presents: Comic-Con '08 - Robotech

Panelists: Steve Yun, webmaster/licensing coordinator Tommy Yune, creative director

This year's Comic-Con International panel for Robotech was mainly a re-listing of what said at Anime Expo earlier this month, although Robotech's toy licensee Toynami previewed new prototypes for planned toys. Harmony Gold's Yune summarized the history of the franchise, from the English Macross releases (pre-Robotech) and the height of the brand's popularity in the 1980s, to the lull during the 1990s and The Shadow Chronicles two years ago.

In terms of ongoing projects, Palladium Books is going forward with rewritten role-playing game books after this year's The Shadow Chronicles game book. Toynami is importing Beagle's 1/10-scale toy of the transformable Mospeada motorcycle as the Masterpiece Cyclone toy. Toynami is again previewing a prototype of the Masterpiece Beta fighter toy in the convention's exhibit hall, but this time in four colors. Toynami is also releasing new variants of its 1/100 scale VF-1 Valkyrie toys and importing Bandai's reissue of the 1/55 VF-1 Valkyrie toys in Robotech and Macross: Do You Remember Love? film variants. Also previewed in Tonyami's booth are prototypes armor for the 1/100 Valkyries and 1/100 battlepods. No release dates were announced for any of the new prototyped toys. The Shadow Chronicles movie itself is now available on Sony's PlayStation Store and Apple's iTunes Store, with a Blu-ray Disc release later this year.

The panelists showed the short teaser for the planned Shadow Rising movie that first debuted during the re-release of the first Shadow Chronicles movie. However, Yune said that the animated sequel is no longer the main thrust of the franchise now that Warner Brothers licensed live-action film rights for Robotech. As at Anime Expo, the panelist confirmed that Tobey Maguire, Frank Agrama, Akiva Goldman, and Charles Roven are producing, with Lawrence Kasdan writing a script. As a result, The Shadow Rising's plans are now contingent on the live-action film plan.

The majority of the audience questions at the end of the panel were about the live-action film plans, to which the panelists deferred from answering, other than to indicate that a re-imagining of setting is strongly possible. There were also questions about the possible release of more Japanese Macross projects, but the panelists said there are still legal issues. There were problems with the last videogame licensee, TDK, but Harmony Gold is getting the videogame rights back. The novels from the 1980s are unlikely to receive audio-book versions, but the coffee mugs and soup bowls on the online store are back in stock.