Hideaki Anno gave us one of the most interesting Godzilla films in years with Shin Godzilla. Now, he’s turning his attentions toward another Tokusatu icon: the legendary size-changing superhero Ultraman.
Tsuburaya Productions and Toho, alongside animation studio Khara, have just formally announced Shin Ultraman, a new movie project re-imagining the Ultraman mythos in a similar manner to Shin Godzilla’s take on the King of All Kaiju’s cinematic legacy.
Set to release in 2021, Shin Ultraman will once again see Anno partner up with Shin Godzilla’s director Shinji Higuchi, who will direct Shin Ultraman, while Anno will produce and write the screenplay. Although the announcement notes that an initial script was drafted this past February, Anno will “fully join the project” once work on the long-awaited Evangelion 3.0+1.0 — the final entry in his rebooted movie adaptation of his seminal mecha/existential crisis anime series — has come to a conclusion ahead of its planned release in 2020.
Shin Godzilla gave Anno the opportunity to give us a weird as hell take on Godzilla that was as grim as it was occasionally bonkers, so seeing what he can do with Ultraman’s alien absurdity — not just the legacy of different Ultra heroes from across the franchise’s vast history, but the series’ weird, less-superheroic roots in the alien-investigation series Ultra Q — is going to be an interesting thing to look out for. We’ll bring you more on Shin Ultraman as we learn it.
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