They say not everything you read on the Internet is true, and with the recent report that a Mega Man movie is being made by both 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment, I hope this isn’t true. It is unknown whether the movie will be live-action or CC animated, and one could hope for the latter.
Capcom hasn’t done anything truly new with Mega Man in the past few years, aside from re-releasing games. It has instead focused more on licensing out the characters to create a huge line of toys, keychains and energy drinks. While a lot of the items are really cool, it shows that the character has tons of popularity behind it for the old and new generation.
So just why is this a bad thing? Currently a Mega Man animated series is in development by Man of Action Entertainment, set to release in 2017 to coincide with the franchise’s 30th anniversary. The animated series is something I am really looking forward to. When the announcement was made back in June, Man of Action’s Duncan Rouleau talked about the long legacy behind the Mega Man franchise, including the cartoon that was released in the ’90s and mentioned that the new series will respects the long tradition of the character.
It’s currently unknown if Fox has had any talks with Man of Action, and chances are there probably hasn’t been much or any communications about creating its own version of the character to “try and introduce the character to a new generation.” With Capcom now having much say in terms of the live-action movies, similar to Resident Evil and the Street Fighter live action movies, it feels like a Mega Man movie won’t do well either, especially if it’s done in live-action with CG robot masters and effects.
The only thing the movie has going for it is that Chernin Entertainment is tied to the project, who worked on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but even then we have yet to see a video game based movie do very well in theaters.