‘My Hero Academia’ May Be Getting Turned into a Live-Action Movie

Hollywood has anime fever and the only prescription is more unnecessary live-action adaptations. The next acclaimed anime set to cross over: the wildly popular superhero show My Hero Academia.

Deadline reports that Legendary Pictures has begun developing a My Hero Academia live-action movie, based on Kohei Horikoshi‘s the manga franchise, the currently-running anime adaptation of which has taken the world by storm. The series is a distinctly Japanese take on the American superhero mythos, throwing homages to Marvel and DC superheroes into a blender with sentai-style antics and shonen anime character types. All of this is enveloped in a typical high school drama, with the protagonists attending an elite school that specializes in training the next generation of superheroes. Think X-Men meets Harry Potter.

Or better yet, think Sky High, the 2005 American superhero comedy film starring Michael Angarano and Kurt Russell that basically provides the template for this movie, should it become a reality under Legendary. Sky High is already a perfectly entertaining (if not objectively good) superhero satire that shares more than a few similarities to My Hero Academia — including a hapless hero who can’t control his newly acquired powers — so why does Legendary need to make a live-action My Hero Academia at all?

Well, to be fair, Legendary seems to be making live-action anime adaptations its specialty. The studio is currently in production with the Detective Pikachu live-action movie and, most importantly, it was behind the hugely popular Pacific Rim movies. Because of Pacific Rim, which may be the closest we’ll get to a perfect live-action anime, I’ll give Legendary the benefit of the doubt — though Pacific Rim‘s spiritual anime roots can probably be attributed to director Guillermo del Toro and not the studio.

No writer or director is yet attached to the potential My Hero Academia live-action movie, but Alex Garcia and Jay Ashenfelter are set to produce the project for Legendary. Ryosuke Yoritomi will produce for Shueisha, the Japanese company that owns the franchise.

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