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Digital Frontier Animates 1st Tekken 3D CG Anime Film
posted on by Egan Loo
The game developer Bandai Namco Games announced at the "Step Up Dubai 2011" event on Wednesday that the first 3D CG anime of the Tekken fighting game franchise is in production. Tekken project director Katsuhiro Harada noted, "There was an odd movie made by Hollywood already, but please forget about it. (laughs)" The new film will open in stereoscopic 3D theaters this summer.
One of the new movie's producers is Tekken art director Yoshinari Mizushima. Digital Frontier, the studio responsible for opening movie footage in the Tekken 5 and Tekken 6 games as well as the Appleseed and Resident Evil: Degeneration films, is producing the new film with director Yōichi Mōri. Dai Satō (Casshern, Cowboy Bebop, Eureka Seven) wrote the script, and Shinji Higuchi (Evangelion, Gunbuster, Vandread) handled the storyboards.
Bandai Namco presented the film's trailer on the official Tekken Channel on the YouTube website.
Source: Famitsu
Update: More background information added. Bandai Namco also announced that the Soul Calibur V fighting game will ship for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles next year. Its story will be set 17 years after the previous games, and it will feature a new main character. Bandai Namco screened a minute-long teaser trailer for the new game featuring the game's main characters Siegfried and Nightmare.
Update 2: The Tekken franchise previously released two cinematic adaptations. Tekken: The Motion Picture was a 1998 animated film produced by Studio DEEN and directed by Kunihisa Sugishima (Yu-Gi-Oh!, Speed Grapher). An American Tekken live-action premiered in Japan in March of 2010, and it was directed by Dwight Little (Hollween 4, Anacondas). The live-action film is scheduled for a North American DVD/Blu-Ray Disc release July 19 by Anchor Bay Entertainment.
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