In a statement Wednesday, Legendary unveiled its plans to adapt Kohei Horikoshi’s best-selling manga series My Hero Academia into a live-action feature film. Legendary, the same company behind the Ryan Reynolds led Detective Pikachu live-action movie, confirmed the news in a Nerdist.com exclusive.
Legendary will be producing the My Hero Academia live-action movie alongside Alex Garcia and Jay Ashenfelter. Shonen Jump publisher Shueisha’s Ryosuke Yoritomi will also collaborate on the project. Toho will be distributing the film in Japan. Details such as casting, plot, and a possible release date have yet to be announced.
For those unfamiliar with the series, My Hero Academia is the story of a world in which 80% of humanity has developed superhuman abilities known as quirks. These abilities have led to the rise of superheroes such as All-Might. Supervillians such as All for One have rose up to clash with these heroes. The story focuses on a young boy named Izuku Midoriya who idolizes these heroes despite having no quirk of his own. Everything changes for Midoriya when a chance encounter with his idol All-Might leads to him finally inheriting a quirk of his own. Midoriya soon after enrolls at U.A. high school, a prestigious hero academy where he journeys to become the greatest hero.
My Hero Academia recently finished its third anime season in September. My Hero Academia: Two Heroes, the series’ first full length film, was released in theaters shortly after. The film grossed more than $5.7 million at the box office, making it one of the top ten highest grossing domestic anime films of all time. On the heels of such success, it is no surprise that Legendary has chosen to tackle a live-action version of the anime. Here’s hoping the live-action version will have as much quirk and charm as the series has shown so far.
