News: "San Andreas" Writers Set to Pen Live-Action "Astro Boy"

New Line, a Warner Bros. division, is in negotiations to pick up the rights to the iconic manga and anime character Astro Boy. They've hired San Andreas writers Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore to write the script.

Animal Logic Entertainment, Ranger 7 Films and Japanese firm Tezuka Productions will produce the feature, which is intended to become a live-action, four-quadrant adventure movie.

Astro Boy was a Japanese manga created in the early 1950s by Osamu Tezuka, who has been described as Japan’s Walt Disney, that ran for decades in comic and newspaper strip form. It was then translated into several anime series that became popular around the world in the 1970s and 1980s.

The last time Hollywood attempted to make a feature version of the character, what resulted was a moderate box office success 2009 animated feature from Imagi Animation. Freddie Highmore voiced the character.

Astro is a robot boy created by a scientist as a replacement for the man’s dead son. After going on a Pinocchio-style adventure, he ends up with a new owner and a new mission: to fight evil using his many superpowers.

Fabrizio and Passmore sold San Andreas to New Line as a pitch. They also wrote two Bruce Willis action flicks, The Prince and Vice. Passmore also worked on the Red Dawn remake.

They are repped by CAA, Adam Goldworm of Aperture Entertainment and Robert Szymanski at Eclipse Law Corp.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter