Christopher McQuarrie to Bring Live-Action 'Starblazers' to the Big Screen

If you want to know why this job remains fascinating day in and day out, then this story gives a pretty good example. More than two years ago Christopher McQuarrie, the guy behind Jack Reacher and writer of The Usual Suspects, was tapped to pen a live-action version of iconic 1970s Japanese anime, Starblazers. Well, absolutely zero was heard about it since and the project was presumed dead. Turns out it wasn't and Starblazers is very much on, only now McQuarrie will be directing.

McQuarrie will write and helm the film, which is based on the Americanized version of Japanese anime series Space Battleship Yamato. The show lasted three seasons (the Japanese version was more extensive), and takes place after Earth was devastated in a war with the alien Gamilons. The radiation from their bombs having devastated the planet, an attempt is made to avoid extinction by venturing 148,000 light years to the planet Iscandar to retrieve the one device that can cure it.

A Starblazers film has been attempted in the past, most notably by Disney back in the Michael Eisner era, but it fell apart when he left. A live-action Space Battleship Yamato movie was released a couple of years ago and is actually pretty good, so it'll be interesting to see what new ideas McQuarrie can bring to the table. Would anybody be shocked if his buddy Tom Cruise gets involved, especially given his recent fascination with sci-fi? McQuarrie has a number of projects on his schedule, including Mission: Impossible 5, an Ice Station Zebra remake, and an adaptation of Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, so it may be awhile before this gets rolling.

I'm stoked, and with Skydance hoping to make this into a franchise I want McQuarrie to drop everything else and make Starblazers happen now. [Deadline]