UK Producer To Make a Live Action Movie of Grave of the Fireflies

by dtshyk
Nov 23, 2012 9:38 PM | 68 Comments

According to Cinema Today, UK film producer Dresden Pictures has acquired the live action film rights of Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies). The filming will start from 2014.

Source: Cinema Today

Live Action

20 of 68 Comments Recent Comments

I don't get it; two live-action remakes of Grave of the Fireflies were already made, one in 2005 and one in 2008.

Jul 27, 2013 5:08 PM by SamuriJim

99.9% of my consciousness is disagreeing on this.

Jul 26, 2013 9:48 PM by removed-user

there is a reason why it was an animation in the first place. it depicts reality but at some spots it needs to be creative.
im just hoping that it'll still give the heart-warming n sympathetic effect from face expressions etc like the animation did. or whatever CG they'll use for the red-themed Seita n Setsuko.

im curious how this is gonna turn out though. i love the animated film.

Jul 26, 2013 6:19 AM by TeNShIkA

ycart59 said:
WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS?

They're desperate.
Fanboys pray for this.
God listens to them before other meaningful wishes.
Alas, this was made.
/thread

Apr 3, 2013 8:56 AM by Slatrix

It's possible to do this right. I hope they can but I'm not overly optimistic. Not because it is Western, but because so many of these attempts have been half hearted in recent year.

If done well, it could be an award winning drama that would bring attention to the original film.

kusushi said:
wat
setsuko will be a british girl in this movie?

They'd be crazy to do that. As that would be changing the story to remove all significance.

The whole point of the movie was to show the toll of war on innocent children. Even in "total" war, on the axis side, even outside of the nukes and just with firebombs, and even without direct actions. The cost of the lives of innocent people like children is disturbing.

There's a lot of people who hold so much contempt to the axis powers because of the atrocities of Germany and Japan, that they push that scorn on innocent lives. The innocent little girls of Nazi German and Imperial Japan were not Nazis or anything like it. And deserve sympathy no matter what their warring governments did.

There is no such thing as true Total War. For every nation has innocent children who are orphaned and suffer for it.

Making the characters of a different nation removed the point and impact altogether.

Apr 2, 2013 4:27 PM by AnnieoftheStars

No, no, no, no, no. I just don't see the point. Some movies are better off left how they are. The anime is a masterpiece, in my humblest opinion one of the greatest movies ever made. A remake would do no justice. What is the point??

Apr 2, 2013 4:13 PM by KingKiyani

Fans in Japan wonder how many changes of the original story will happen in a UK production... Insert a western character like they did with Last Samurai? Or shifting the whole thing to London during the Nazi air raids?

Nov 29, 2012 4:52 AM by symbv

ycart59 said:
WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS?

Because they can

Nov 29, 2012 3:42 AM by bergil

WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS?

Nov 28, 2012 7:35 PM by ycart59

Culture crossovers rarely work, let alone an adaptation of such an endeared story.

Please no. Things like this only end badly.

Nov 28, 2012 6:23 PM by Omniknight

I think this kind of movie will be really well adapted into live action

Nov 26, 2012 9:53 PM by Muzer

dtshyk said:
According to Cinema Today, UK film producer Dresden Pictures has acquired the live action film rights of Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies). The filming will start from 2014.

Source: Cinema Today

There is no science fiction, super power, or supernatural elements in it, so there is not much they could fuck up in it.As long as the keep everything to the period and hired decent child actors I could see this film being well made. Although since there is a Japanese live action version of the film I wonder if this version will take place in WWII japan or will it be adapted to take place in a more recent war in some other country.

Nov 26, 2012 3:29 PM by ezikialrage

name93 said:

GloriousHawk said:
There there, name93. I've agreed with your posts so far.

I haven't changed my narrative with that last post, so what makes you disagree with it?
The person said that "they" are "raping good things". First of all, "they" ( Dresden Pictures ) haven't made any previous live-action adaptations of any anime or manga for us to judge their abilities to adapt Japanese media for Western audiences. Therefore, we can say that "they might rape good things, but already claiming that it will be shit and somehow "rape the original" is bollocks and just displays the ignorance of the poster.
Secondly, most of the people opposed to any Western adaptations of anime or manga properties quote the failures of Dragonball Evolution and Avatar: the last Airbender. What these people fail to see is that, as I already mentioned, Grave of the Fireflies is nothing like these stories and is much easier to adapt. But more importantly, I'd question whether these good things that are being "raped" are really as good as the fans claim. DBZ is a series composed 40% of filler and 60% of over-the-top-never-ending-ridiculous-power-up-repetitive action scenes. The only difference between it and the newer shounen action series like Bleach is the nostalgia factor that raises its rating way above its actual quality. So please people, while Dragonball: Evolution really was a piece of shit, don't claim that it "ruined a masterpiece".

more like 10% filler, 90% aggressive grunting

Nov 26, 2012 1:15 AM by Kazeshini

GloriousHawk said:
There there, name93. I've agreed with your posts so far.

Nov 25, 2012 1:34 AM by name93

saxophone15 said:
Agreed. What's with the extreme pessimistic or even sometimes hostile view towards anything western (most of the time American)? I don't look at other countries and automatically think they are going to ruin anything they get their hands on. You guys need to be careful what you say because I've seen some borderline racist comments here from time to time.

Be grateful that this isn't Sankaku Complex, which is essentially a giant echo chamber of anti-Americanism, Sinophobia, anti-Korean sentiment, and general Japanese exceptionalism. (Oddly, they also take a very dim view of the Japanese far right; one of the few things that can unite that site's readers is their collective hatred of Shintaro Ishihara, but that's neither here nor there.)

If they do decide to Westernize Grave of the Fireflies, the Blitz would be the first event to come to mind for the historical backdrop; London and Coventry would thus be logical choices for the setting if they go that route. Another possible idea might lie right in the company's own name; there's probably a reason why they're called Dresden Pictures. Alternately, they could try setting it in the Eastern Front, at which point it'd essentially be a remake of Come and See (another World War II film that Roger Ebert admires, incidentally enough).

Or maybe, I dunno, they might actually film it in Japan, using Japanese actors? What exactly precludes a British company from making a film in Japan?

Nov 25, 2012 1:19 AM by LelouchZero

very ... !

Nov 25, 2012 1:00 AM by simindk

name93 said:
How is this "raping" the original? It hasn't even been made yet FFS!

There there, name93. I've agreed with your posts so far.

Nov 25, 2012 12:58 AM by GloriousHawk

At least it'll be better than anything Uwe Boll could make.

Nov 25, 2012 12:25 AM by soulless4now

I don't know, it's UK not USA, so it's probably be genuinely good... I'm slightly optimistic..

Nov 24, 2012 11:25 PM by millo

its only been mentioned once in this thread, but they have already done this.

not once

but twice

according to Wikipedia.

Nov 24, 2012 6:58 PM by eldest