Do you like Evangelion? Do you like Attack on Titan?
Well then good news! It’s just been announced that the directors of both those movies, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, are working on the upcoming 2016 Japanese Godzilla reboot film. With both of them having plenty of experience creating huge mechs and huge Titans, we can only expect that this Godzilla movie is going to be… well, huge!
Thanks to the success of the 2014 Hollywood Godzilla movie, Japan has decided to make an even bigger and better version of its own, enlisting the help of Hideaki Anno (of Evangelion fame) and Shinji Higuchi (special effects director for the upcoming Attack on Titan live-action movie) as the director and special effects director respectively.
▼ It’s hard to tell from this picture, but they’re both actually 100 feet tall.
Anno and Higuchi have been friends for over 30 years, but this will be their first full-scale motion picture produced together. Higuchi is no stranger to the kaiju world, having worked on the 1984 Return of Godzilla and the ’90s Gamera films. Both directors want to give their all to make a film that will let Japan reclaim its position as the center of the giant-monster world.
That’s a lot of pressure to face, and it almost made Anno not want to accept the role as director/writer in the first place. He was initially offered the position in January 2012, but after the release of Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo, he fell into a deep depression and was not emotionally up to the task. Now, over two years later, he’s changed his mind and joined the team after learning that his friend Higuchi would be working on it as well.
Higuchi himself has been terrified of the expectations that are surrounding the first Toho Godzilla film to be released in over 12 years. Regarding the matter he said: “Being able to work with my friend is the only thing keeping me from running away from all the pressure.” But, just to make it clear that neither he nor Anno plan on letting a little stress get to them, he added: “We’ll have an amazing, horrific nightmare of a movie ready for you next year.”
The only other information that we have about the movie so far comes from a “Godzilla footprint” released with the tagline that “this footprint comes from a Godzilla even bigger than the 108-meter (354-foot) tall Hollywood one.” So if you had any thoughts about the upcoming Godzilla not being huge, consider them… squashed.
▼ Just look what happened to this poor little trilobite when he didn’t think Godzilla was that big either.
Filming for the movie is planned to start in spring 2015, and the release is scheduled for summer 2016. That’s plenty of time to get caught up on your Godzilla movie backlog if you start now!
Source: CINEMATODAY
Top/featured image: RocketNews24