Maher Al-Samkari, author of “Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion: R” and “Faren: A Dragon’s Tale” posted the fol­low­ing on the Modus Pro­duc­tions online forum. It is a slightly more expan­sive and some­what more revised ver­sion of a state­ment pre­vi­ously made by Tiffany Grant, Eng­lish voice of Asuka, and wife of ADV co-founder Matt Green­field. In it she adressed a num­ber of issues, but mainly adressed the issue of qual­ity, assur­ing that these films will be done by WETA with painstak­ing care.

QUOTE:“As you can imag­ine, I have received a large num­ber of ques­tions inquir­ing about var­i­ous aspects of the announced live-action Evan­ge­lion movie. As I answered each ques­tion, I would add on to my ear­lier response, which is how I came up with this “arti­cle” on the sub­ject. I hope this will address your concerns.

First off, there are 26 TV episodes and two movies in the Eva library (not to men­tion the as yet unfin­ished manga series by co-creator Sadamoto). 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 still 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 — for which they just won an unprece­dented num­ber of Acad­emy awards in a clean sweep of all cat­e­gories in which they were nom­i­nated. By watch­ing the fan­tas­tic doc­u­men­taries on the LOTR DVDs, you can get an excel­lent idea of the kind of atten­tion to detail that this group gives to every­thing they do.

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. 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.” There­fore, “Kate Rose” for exam­ple is the name they are using for the designs is in place of “Pilot of 02″ or whatever.

As no actors have yet been cast, the pre-production draw­ings are sim­ply pic­tures that are drawn of imag­i­nary peo­ple in place of hav­ing a head­less body in a plug suit. The artists are try­ing to design what a real-life plug suit will look like, and it would seem eas­ier to do (and bet­ter to look at!) if the per­son also has a head. Remem­ber — we don’t know what the suits are even made of! Rub­ber? Plas­tic? Leather? The sketches are part of the early cos­tum­ing process, and I am quite cer­tain that when a direc­tor is found, he or she will seek out the best peo­ple for the roles. It seems quite doubt­ful that they would try to find a per­son to match a drawing.

It may also be of inter­est to note that there is a gen­uine desire to cast kids of the right age to play the main roles — NOT 22 year-olds to “play younger.” There­fore, it is dif­fi­cult to spec­u­late at this early stage on who will play these roles since it is not pos­si­ble to tell right now when prin­ci­pal film­ing will begin.

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.”

Source: Modus Pro­duc­tions Online Forum

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

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

Orig­i­nally posted by forum mem­ber YUNA. Thanks Yuna.
Com­plete Arti­cle Here

At “A Week­end With Tomino”, Matthew Green­field was asked a series of ques­tions regard­ing the live action evan­ge­lion movie. Yuna has posted a tran­script of this ques­tion & answer ses­sion which can be found on the link above.

In sum­mary; Matt states his rea­sons as to why no thoughts on cast meme­bers have been aired yet — par­tic­u­larly because they may be per­fect now, but when film­ing actu­ally starts they may not be (due to age­ing). He also goes on to talk about Lau­rence Fish­burne. With regards to sto­ry­line he men­tions that the movie will stay true to some things but quite obvi­ously not every­thing. (He really reveals a lot! — sar­casm). Oh and Asuka won’t kill whordes of angels.

Tiffany Grant (voice actor for Asuka) has just had an inter­view with Comi­con.

When asked about her views, thoughts and plans for the movie Tiffany says she thinks it will be “INCREDIBLE” and also men­tions that her hus­band Matt Green­field will be on the pro­duc­tion team. Appar­ently she knows a lot about the movie how­ever isn’t allowed to tell any­one any­thing. Accord­ing to Tiffany, a large por­tion of the folks at WETA are fans of Evan­ge­lion as, “the entire show has aired in Aus­tralia at least twice on reg­u­lar tele­vi­sion”. This is good news. She also goes on to men­tion that if the movie is suc­cess­ful we can expect one or two more sequels to cover the whole 26 episode period.
Now for the not so good news. When asked about cast­ing, she stated she had a few ideas about who could play Asuka, but also spec­u­lated that the shoot­ing wont begin for another cou­ple of years. Mean­ing we wont get to see the movie until at least 2006. But we can­not rush these things.

Inter­view:
THE PULSE: What do you think of the plans for a live action NGE movie? What have you heard about it?

GRANT: I think it’s going to be INCREDIBLE! Since my hus­band, Matt Green­field, is one of the pro­duc­ers, I know WAY more about it than I am allowed to tell >=)

The folks who pro­duced the ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies down in New Zealand, WETA, didn’t want to be out of a job when LOTR finally wraps all its post pro­duc­tion, so they were look­ing for work. Since many of them were Eva fans (real­ize that the entire show has aired in Aus­tralia at least twice on reg­u­lar tele­vi­sion), they thought why not do a live action Eva film?

Rest assured, since ADV and Gainax are both on board for this project, it will be han­dled with kid gloves. And, if it’s suc­cess­ful, you can look for one or two more sequels since it won’t be pos­si­ble to tell the whole 26 episode story in one two-hour movie. If you want to get an idea of the types of tech­niques that will be involved, just watch the behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­taries on the LOTR DVDs. Amaz­ing stuff!
THE PULSE: These char­ac­ters are obvi­ously very near and dear to your heart. Whom would you like to see cast in the film?

GRANT: Funny as it may sound, I haven’t thought about too many of the parts. I do have an idea about a pos­si­ble Asuka, but I don’t think I am at lib­erty to say. How­ever, since the film won’t begin shoot­ing for about two years, keep your eyes out for up-and-coming thirteen-year-olds who will be fif­teen when film­ing begins.

BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
Full inter­view avail­able here: Full Inter­view
More infor­ma­tion on Tiffany here: Tiffany’s Web­site

“We are very excited to be a part of this won­der­ful project,” Weta boss Richard Tay­lor said. “The sub­ject mat­ter is pro­vid­ing a fan­tas­tic level of diver­sity for us, allow­ing us to work in the animé world – which is at the other end of the design spec­trum from Middle-earth. Hav­ing had the priv­i­lege of work­ing on such strong source mate­r­ial that The Lord of the Rings offered, it is a priv­i­lege to again be involved in sub­ject mat­ter that has a strong and loyal fan base.”

Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion cre­ator Hideaki Anno is enthused about the project. “Evan­ge­lion was cre­ated with a very Japan­ese sen­si­bil­ity,” said Anno. “In the live-action ver­sion, though, I sug­gested that the cre­ators let their imag­i­na­tions roam, uncon­strained by the frame­work of the exist­ing animé. There are some very sur­pris­ing ideas in the new design plans — things I’d never thought of before. I was amazed to encounter such dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing about the project. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing the re-creation of the title.”

Source: New­type