While at Comic-Con, I’ve been told the live-action Naruto movie in development at Lionsgate with Destin Daniel Cretton is a complete disaster.
I’m told it’s on the level of Dragonball Evolution or even as bad as what Lionsgate is doing with The Crow reboot.
So what I am told is that those who are working on Naruto don’t have a clue in the world. It’s so bad that those working on the movie don’t even know who the villains of the character are, yet they’re developing the movie.
I’m told it is a similar situation to that of Dragonball Evolution where they’re just developing Naruto to take advantage of the built in audience but don’t know anything about the IP and don’t respect the source material or the fans.
In the announcement in February, Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto signed off on the project.
Well, that’s exactly what happened with Dragonball Evolution. It’s thought the studio behind Dragonball Evolution, Fox, fed Akira Toriyama a line of bullshit. What ended up happening is that Akira Toriyama came out of retirement to save the franchise.
Dragonball Evolution bombed at the box office with $55.7 million. The Rotten Tomatoes Score is at 14%. The Audience Score is at 19%.
My insiders who are huge fans of anime told me about the Naruto movie, “They don’t give a shit about the source material. The fans don’t wan to see their favorite anime characters get butchered by another Hollywood studio. It’s happened too many times.”