Terra Formars live-action movie in the works, Takashi Miike to direct

Our friends over at Anime News Network recently previewed a cover of next week’sYoung Jump magazine, which will announce the plans for a live-action film based on the hit sci-fi manga Terra Formars.

Although details are scant at the moment the one juicy tidbit is that Takashi Miike, arguably the most prolific director to walk the earth, has signed on.

The Terra Formars manga began in 2011 and follows the aftermath of an attempt by Earth to colonize Mars by sending up algae spreading cockroaches to produce a livable environment for humans. However, the cockroaches end up evolving into killer humanoid creatures which kind of put a cramp on us living there.

After getting wiped out the first time, Earthlings begin to send out teams of fighters enhanced with insect-like powers to exterminate the cockroaches and reclaim Mars for themselves. Much like real-life encounters with cockroaches the battles tend to be violent and messy affairs.

And so, it’s with good reason that Takashi Miike was sought out the helm this project. He’s never been one to show restraint when it comes to on-screen violence so we shouldn’t expect any fake blood or guts to be spared during production. It’s also said that he’s aStarship Troopers fan so hopefully we’ll see something along those lines.

On the other hand, Japanese readers of the news were extremely quick to point out that live-action adaptations of manga and anime tend to suck.

“Boring.”
“It’ll never get off the ground.”
“They won’t be able to show anything with all the censorship. It’ll just be a black screen.”
“Why do they always have to try a live-action version?”
“It’s sure to be a crap-action movie.”
“You should never go beyond two dimensions.”
“Have they ever made a good live-action manga movie?”
“Devilman was better than I thought it would be.”
“I’m fine with the manga, thanks.”

They raise a good argument but it’s all just speculation at this point. I’m holding out faith that Miike won’t pull any punches. We’ll just have to wait as Young Jump tickles our collective butts with the feather of more details in each issue as production gets underway.