Having been a key part of the team bringing one of the most entertaining MCU Disney+ series – that would be Hawkeye to life, it appears that director Rhys Thomas is ready to wrangle giant robots. Sony has hired him to direct its Robotech movie.
Robotech took three separate Japanese anime shows, combined them with re-edited footage and dubbed it all into a series that could run as a daily 'toon in the States and elsewhere. It's set at a time when Earth has developed a series of giant robots, using technology from an alien spacecraft that crashed in the South Pacific. When an alien civilisation attempts to invade Earth, the fightback centres around two young pilots, who must harness the technology and save the world.
This is a concept that has been lumbering around the development wasteland for years now – Warners tried for a while, with Nic Mathieu plucked from the world of ads to handle a script written by Alfred Gough and Miles Miller, which never actually came to life.
Since Sony scored the rights in 2015, it has seen the likes of Andy Muschietti and James Wan come and go. The studio clearly thinks that Thomas, who before his MCU stint, was better known for work on Saturday Night Live and Documentary Now! (he's back directing the latter) has what it takes to get this one moving. Art Marcum and Matt Holloway's draft is now in the hands of up-and-coming writer/directors Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka (who were also script consultants on Hawkeye to re-write, so we'll see if there's progress this time.