Nick Buras has kindly informed me that Weta have updated their web­site and have included the Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion live action movie as a ‘cur­rent project’:

Weta Work­shop Eva Project Page

As for the sta­tus of the project, which every­one has been con­cerned due to the lack of any for­mi­da­ble news: UNDER DEVELOPMENT -

QUOTE: “Weta has been design­ing a live-action adap­ta­tion of Neon Gen­e­sis: Evan­ge­lion. The film is on hold but it is Weta’s hope that it will enjoy get­ting to work on the film pro­duc­tion of this amaz­ing story in the near future.”

The site also con­tains a flash rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all their con­cept work so far, no pic­tures that can­not be found here although it does con­firm that they cre­ated the rogue image found only in a japan­ese new­type mag­a­zine, (Image). In the image descrip­tions the char­ac­ters are given their cor­rect titles.

From ANN’s Kamikaze­con report:

“As expected, a large por­tion of ques­tions revolved around the live-action ver­sion of Neon Gen­e­sis Evan­ge­lion. Green­field con­firmed that the project was very much alive, and they were cur­rently in the process of find­ing a direc­tor. While nam­ing no names, Green­field did con­firm that inter­est has been shown by sev­eral major direc­tors, includ­ing one who has won an Oscar. He also men­tioned that the prob­a­ble loca­tion of the shoot would be New Zealand, the same coun­try where WETA, the stu­dio slated to cre­ate spe­cial effects for Evan­ge­lion, is located. When asked how soon the movie would be fin­ished, Green­field indi­cated it would be at least a year, most likely 3 or 4.”

Hi there, estranged mod­er­a­tor Eva Mon­key reporting.

This past week­end (Feb. 18–20) I took a trip down to Crys­tal City to host an Evan­ge­lion panel for the Kat­su­con animé con­ven­tion. Among other top­ics we dis­cussed the Live Action Evan­ge­lion film.

Please note that the fol­low­ing is an unof­fi­cial source and should for now be treated as noth­ing more than rumor.

One of the atten­dees claimed to have an asso­ciate cur­rently intern­ing in WETA’s prop shop (for lack of a bet­ter term). He claimed that WETA artists have pro­duced more than just the con­cep­tual art­work we’ve seen thus far, includ­ing some pre­lim­i­nary 3D mod­els and so forth.

Also of inter­est is that the word around the stu­dio is that Peter Jack­son is indeed inter­ested in direct­ing this project, how­ever due to con­trac­tual agree­ments with Uni­ver­sal (?), he is cur­rently tied into work­ing on King Kong, and is unable to head up Live Action Evan­ge­lion, and may well be in line or have vouched for Live Action Eva once King Kong’s pro­duc­tion closes.

Once again, this is pure unsub­sta­ni­ated rumor, and should be taken with a grain of salt. The pos­si­bil­ity for Peter Jackson’s direc­tion may exist, accord­ing to what I was told. How­ever, this is not a cred­i­ble source and needs fur­ther verification.

Due to the lack of news of late, I felt it nec­ces­sary, if for no other rea­son than to give you some­thing to think about.

ADV have launched a new sec­tion of their web­site ded­i­cated to their the­atri­cal releases.

ADV The­atri­cal Division

Quote: ADV Films, the #1 producer-distributor of animé in the U.S., today announced that they are expand­ing the ADV Films web­site to include a page ded­i­cated to the company’s the­atri­cal releases (www​.adv​films​.com/​t​h​e​a​t​r​i​cal).

The new web­site, with an empha­sis on Japan­ese and Korean films, offers a one-stop infor­ma­tion source for both film buffs and the­atre pro­fes­sion­als, pro­vid­ing back­ground mate­r­ial on each film as well as list­ings of the­atres and play dates for cur­rent show­ings. The­atre man­agers and pub­li­cists are able to down­load press mate­ri­als, includ­ing biogra­phies, cast and crew lists, inter­views and art work for each film. Film buy­ers have the abil­ity to check out ADV Theatrical’s release sched­ule as well as a chance to see what films are avail­able in 35 mm from ADV’s library, such as the clas­sic Gam­era series.

This expan­sion of the web site comes at time when the cin­ema world is focus­ing on the Korean film mak­ing indus­try. Richard Pena, Direc­tor of the New York Film Fes­ti­val and cura­tor of the Korean Film ret­ro­spec­tive at Lin­coln Cen­ter recently stated “With recent major fes­ti­val awards at Cannes and Venice, the cin­ema of South Korea has become one of the most respected, and eagerly antic­i­pated, national cin­e­mas any­where today.”

“This new page is a wel­come addi­tion to our web site” said John Led­ford, pres­i­dent, CEO and co-founder of ADV Films. “Our animé web site has always been very pop­u­lar with our fans and I know that our the­atri­cal page will be also.”

Offi­cial Announce­ment — source

Alright, so ADV has appointed a man named Steven Buck as the Direc­tor of the up-and-coming the­atri­cal divi­sion of ADV (which would, of course, be com­pro­mised of only the Evan­ge­lion project as far as I know, there may be other projects we don’t know about!). Just as a note: this is NOT stat­ing that he is the direc­tor of Evan­ge­lion… they still haven’t cho­sen, or have not released the information…

But, since Buck will be head of the the­atrics, I tried to do a bit of back-ground research on him only to fall short (though I really only checked on imdb). Do any of you know any­thing about him rather than the fact that he founded art-house movie theatres?

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

At the King Records/Production IG panel at Otakon 2004, Okazaki, when asked about the live action Eva movie, stated that King Records was not involved in it and that they “weren’t very happy about it.”

King Records owns the Star Child label that han­dles dis­tri­b­u­tion and licens­ing for alot of animé titles. They han­dled Japan­ese dis­tri­b­u­tion for Evan­ge­lion and the movies. They also released all of the Japan­ese Eva soundtracks.

Source: http://​www​.ani​me​news​net​work​.com/​c​o​n​v​e​n​t​i​o​n​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​189

Just got this email, an inter­est­ing read, noth­ing new, A-list directors:

Hello,

I don’t think any­body is offi­cially cov­er­ing O-Chibicon this week­end (being a new­bie con and small), but
it does so hap­pen that ADV is head­quar­tered in Hous­ton, TX.

ADV, apart from other events they did there, also had a 2 hour panel which included Matt Green­field, Jan­ice Williams,
Tiffany Grant and other ADV staff.

Most of the stuff they cov­ered had already been posted at other cons, but there was, I believe, some new information.

Below are some of the ques­tions and answers of inter­est I cov­ered with Mr. Greenfield:

—–

Q: “Matt, assum­ing I have my infor­ma­tion cor­rect, you are a pro­ducer [live action Evan­ge­lion]. Will you
be mak­ing a cameo in the film? Tra­di­tion­ally this is the case [for producers]

A:
Matt com­mented on what seemed to be an inside joke on his pos­si­ble appear­ance in the film, but he did directly com­ment on:

“We are def­i­nitely try­ing to have all of the VAs involved in the film. Both Japan­ese and Amer­i­can voice actors.
We hope each one can have a cameo of some sort. Of course, this will all depend when we actu­ally get
closer to the project [pro­duc­tion]. Sched­ul­ing and so forth.”

——-

Q:
When answer­ing ques­tions on the film, he reit­er­ated, as he did in other cons and venues, that actors are not cur­rently
being seri­ously con­sid­ered as the project is in its ear­li­est pre-production. He cited the kids from Harry Pot­ter as a good exam­ple of what can hap­pen in a few years.

He did com­ment directly on:

A:
“Before any of that we need a Direc­tor. We are cur­rently talk­ing to 7 to 8 direc­tors. These guys are all ‘A lists’”

He went on to say that, of course, cast­ing choices would be made by the Director.

——
I point­edly asked:

Q: “Matt, what kind of finan­cial risk will the live action Evan­ge­lion be to ADV films?”

A:
Matt went on to say, more or less, that it is not a finan­cial risks because IT IS Evan­ge­lion.
He believes that the high pro­duc­tion val­ues of Weta, the pas­sion for the project and its world­wide
fol­low­ing will guar­an­tee its success.

——

(Per­son­ally, I asked the above ques­tion because I fear that if the film does flop it could bank­rupt ADV, but anyhow.)

I hope some of the above stuff is useful.

Fer­nando Gon­za­lez Jr.
mk2000