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CG Appleseed's Aramaki to Direct CG Starship Troopers

Sony Pictures announced on Wednesday that it is producing a new computer-animated Starship Troopers: Invasion film with director Shinji Aramaki for release next summer. Aramaki had previously directed the two computer-animated Appleseed films, "The Package" segment of Halo Legends, MADOX-01, Megazone 23 Part III, Viper's Creed, and the computer-animated pilot of Captain Harlock. He also worked on the mechanical designs for Bubblegum Crisis, Genesis Climber Mospeada, and other anime.

Flint Dille is writing the screenplay after working as a story editor on The Transformers and G.I. Joe television series of the 1980s. He later wrote the Venom film and the video-game tie-ins for The Chronicles of Riddick. The staff commissioned illustrator Hidetaka Tenjin (Macross Frontier, Macross Zero, Hellsing Ultimate) to create the teaser poster (pictured right). Joseph Chou (Appleseed films, Halo Legends, proposed live-action Evangelion) is producing the new project. Edward Neumeier and Casper Van Dien of the live-action Starship Troopers film are executive producers.

Sony Pictures give the following description of the plot:

A distant Federation outpost Fort Casey comes under attack by bugs. The team on the fast attack ship Alesia is assigned to help the Starship John A. Warden stationed in Fort Casey evacuate along with the survivors and bring military intelligence safely back to Earth. Carl Jenkins, now ministry of Paranormal Warfare, takes the starship on a clandestine mission before its rendezvous with the Alesia and goes missing in the nebula. Now, the battle-hardened troopers are charged with a rescue mission that may lead to a much more sinister consequence than they ever could have imagined....

Before Paul Verhoeven's loose live-action film adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers novel classic and several direct-to-video follow-ups, Gundam anime studio Sunrise produced a video version of Starship Troopers in 1988. Tetsuro Amino (Macross 7, One Stormy Night) directed that version with designs by Kazutaka Miyatake (Macross, Gunbuster, Eureka Seven).

Studio Nue (Macross, Legend of the Galactic Heroes) co-founder Naoyuki Katō had created powered suit designs for his illustrations in the 1977 Japanese reprint of Heinlein's novel. Sunrise has openly noted that Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino drew some inspiration from the humanoid powered suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although the mobile suit robots of Gundam are ten times the size of humans (18 meters, or the same size as the super robot pioneer Mazinger Z).

[Via Colony Drop, AICN Anime]

Image © 2011 Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Inc.

Update: More background information added.