Movie Chronicles » Evangelion Live Action Movie

Questions finally answered March 2nd, 2004

Look what Uncle KamaKase has for you! This is writ­ten by Tiffany Grant:

ARTICLE SNIPPET:
As for the “slug” names used in the pre­lim­i­nary script (NOT the final ver­sion!!!) which appear on the pro­duc­tion draw­ings, they are only used so as not to refer to them as “Pilot A” and “Cap­tain B” etc. As has been widely dis­cussed, the cast will be inter­na­tional, and mostly of Euro­pean descent. Mean­ing, for exam­ple, if Daniel Rad­cliffe (Animé Insider’s sug­ges­tion — NOT mine!) were to play the lead male role, it would be pretty stu­pid to call an ENGLISH boy “Shinji.”

The show is in VERY early stages of pre-production, so noth­ing is final yet. ADV was just try­ing to share a lit­tle Eva good­ness with every­one by show­ing off some of the thou­sands of pro­duc­tion draw­ings that have been pro­duced. I think they are fab­u­lous, per­son­ally, and I eagerly await each new devel­op­ment in the project.

FULL ARTICLE

But if you ask me, leav­ing it on “I believe you can all rest easy know­ing that the films will be every­thing and more that we ever thought they could be.” Isn’t very reas­sur­ing. But I sup­pose they had to try and coax us some how:

I noticed there have been a num­ber of posts regard­ing the movie, and
this is a lit­tle essay I have writ­ten for your perusal. I hope it
clears some things up. — TG

First off, there are 26 TV episodes and two movies in the Eva
library. The first goal is to pro­duce a movie that encap­su­lates the
most impor­tant ele­ments of the early part of the series so that the
viewer will not have to have seen the afore­men­tioned 15 or so hours
of video — AND — leave room for one or two (maybe more?) fol­low up
films that can fin­ish off the story.

The movie is being pro­duced jointly by Gainax (of course), ADV and
WETA. If you are some­how NOT famil­iar with the WETA Work­shop, this
is the incred­i­ble stu­dio founded by Peter Jack­son in New Zealand that
cre­ated the Lord of the Rings films. By watch­ing the fan­tas­tic
doc­u­men­taries on the LOTR DVDs, you can get an excel­lent idea of the
kind of atten­tion to detail that is being given to everything.

Also, if you have read the LOTR, I think you will see that the
char­ac­ters in that iconic tome have been very faith­fully brought to
life and not, as you put it, “screwed up.” In fact, in a film
adap­ta­tion of the sec­ond most read book in the Eng­lish lan­guage (the
Bible is the first), it is pretty well unan­i­mously agreed that WETA
got it exactly right. Bear­ing that in mind, I have every rea­son to
have con­fi­dence that the same folks who hand glued every hair on each
hob­bit foot, will do a spec­tac­u­lar job with our NGE heroes.

Keep in mind that WETA will not be doing this in a vac­uum either, as
they will be super­vised by peo­ple at both Gainax and ADV (such as my
hus­band, of course).

As for the “slug” names used in the pre­lim­i­nary script (NOT
the final ver­sion!!!) which appear on the pro­duc­tion draw­ings, they
are only used so as not to refer to them as “Pilot A” and “Cap­tain B“
etc. As has been widely dis­cussed, the cast will be inter­na­tional,
and mostly of Euro­pean descent. Mean­ing, for exam­ple, if Daniel
Rad­cliffe (Animé Insider’s sug­ges­tion — NOT mine!) were to play the
lead male role, it would be pretty stu­pid to call an ENGLISH
boy “Shinji.”

The show is in VERY early stages of pre-production, so noth­ing is
final yet. ADV was just try­ing to share a lit­tle Eva good­ness with
every­one by show­ing off some of the thou­sands of pro­duc­tion draw­ings
that have been pro­duced. I think they are fab­u­lous, per­son­ally, and
I eagerly await each new devel­op­ment in the project.

I believe you can all rest easy know­ing that the films will be
every­thing and more that we ever thought they could be.