Dark Hori­zons has posted some rumors con­cern­ing Tiffany’s thoughts on cast­ing. Note, these are only rumors and cast­ing is still a long way off. Hope­fully we’ll find out who the direc­tor is before the year is out. Any­way, mov­ing on.

Tiffany stated that;

• If she were to make a cameo in the movie, she would like to play Asuka’s mother
• She toyed with the ideas of Hugo Weav­ing play­ing Gendo and Jen­nifer Gar­ner play­ing Mis­ato (a good pick IMO)

Still only minis­cule threads of news at the moment folks. A lull in the (live) action.

Thanks to Tero Niemi

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

In a reply to an email ask­ing about the movie, Tiffany gave a few small extra details with respect to the sched­ule of the Live Action movie.

As we know, the movie is cur­rently in very early stages of pro­duc­tion. The main aim at this point seems to be find­ing a suit­able direc­tor to take on the project. Tiffany Grant goes on to state that it will be two to three YEARS before cast­ing takes place — so the actors they have in mind right now would have to be approx­i­mately twelve years old, so as to be the cor­rect age dur­ing filming.

Thanks to Saman­tha G

Upon email­ing Tiffany Grant about infor­ma­tion of cast­ing (I’m a 14 y/o girl who has received sev­eral com­pli­ments about my uncanny resem­b­lence to Rei), I received infor­ma­tion about the sched­ule laid out thus far. It is prob­a­bly all already known, but could serve as an update. It was received April 11, 2004:

Sin­cerely,
Saman­tha G

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.

Orig­i­nal post by forum mem­ber Nages. Nages has given news of an update on Tiffany Grant’s web­site, where there is now info on the Evan­ge­lion Live action movie. It basi­cally tells us things that we already know while try­ing not to cir­cum­vent the inti­a­tion of obscene gos­sip regard­ing any­thing whatsoever.

Here is the topic: Orig­i­nal Topic
Here is the site (it’s at the bot­tom): Tiffany Grant’s Website

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