Australian Astro????

In the most surprising movie news since, well, just about ever, I read:

The Australian animation studio behind The Lego Movie is to make a live-action superhero movie based on the popular cartoon character Astro Boy

As it prepares to start production on two Lego spin-offs, Animal Logic has signed a deal with Japan's Tezuka Productions for a big-budget movie it hopes to shoot in Australia next year.

Chief executive Zareh Nalbandian said the plan was to create a "Marvel-style" franchise based on the robot superhero.

It is very hard imagining a live action version of the title character.   And I certainly hope they won't use the awful motion capture technique.  

Dedicated readers may recall that in 2009 I gave two thumbs up to the American made Astro Boy movie, which seemed to suffer from marketing failure and was shamefully under-seen.     Re-reading my review, I commend it again to my vast international readership.