I, along with possibly the majority of this board, was wondering if CGL has ever put any thought into doing (having done) a totally canon full-length anime film or series? I personally think that it would open up the Sixth world to a whole new audience that doesn’t know about the game. You could do it in segments, ie. the history followed by the 50s, 60s, and finish up with the current world time frame. Just an idea that has probably been brought up before many times. You could even have players submit characters and supporting cast (NPCs) which would go over extremely well with your fans. I’m sure if you put this topic up for a vote, the majority would be for it. I, for one would not rent it, but buy it; and I just now am getting ‘into’ anime.

i'm not exactly the longest-standing member of these boards, but i have been around for a while, and i can't say i ever remember seeing a suggestion of this nature.

the simple fact is, CGL are not the people to talk to about this.

first of all, they make pen and paper games, PDFs, etc. slightly different from creating anime.

secondly, they probably don't have the rights for that (largely because they make pen and paper roleplaying games as opposed to making anime).

so yeah, odds are good that they have neither the skills/equipment or the rights to make a shadowrun anime. if you would like to see a shadowrun anime, your best bet is to suggest it to an anime company, who would then have to approach fanpro to see if they could buy the rights to make an animated feature out of it. frankly, i have no idea if fanpro has licensed those rights out, but it's also possible that someone else already owns those rights.

Also why an anime? Sure there is some good anime but really it won't do Shadowrun as well as it should. The big hit animes cost a bomb and even then some of them are crap. There. Are better mediums for a SR show or film. As Jaid said its not even up to CGL. I'm not sure what would be best for SR but anime wouldnt be gritty enough. Live action would be to expensive to go deep enough in to the 6th world. Cgi might work. Even with fan backing and licencing the project could fall though like other atemps at putting SR on media.

Could be worse than Anime. Could be Fan-Made.

...

Although, it would be cool to make a Shadowrun movie...

The various reasons this has not been done, and likely not even really considered can be found in the previous posts. I am just here to say Anime, with very few exceptions, is crap.


*takes cover*

thats only your personal opinion but Lets not make this into a anime is teh best/anime is teh suck flame war OK every one.

Just like everything else, there's good Anime, there's bad Anime, and there's personal taste that has to be taken into consideration.

Now, let's get back to answering the question: Shadowrun Movie of any sort?

Be fair now. Most American TV and movies are crap, too. It has nothing to do with it being Japanese or being anime.

Hmm well given how the D&D movie turned out would Shadowrun have any better chance? I like the idea and all but I have my doubts if it would work. First of all if you wanted to be a success anime is not the way to go,I love it but it still has a long way to goes before it goes truly mainstream and gets away from the pokemon and porn stereotype that a lot of people have. If Shadowrun was animated it would probably be a TV series like the old battletech cartoon.

The short & sweet is that doing a Movie or Anime series would be too expensive to produce and run the risk of alienating the fan base (we are an opinionated bunch). Add to that the multitude of already successful series that exemplify the SR world (GitS, Lain, BGC, GSG, GSC, etc), doing an anime would become cost prohibitive.
For a comparison, take a look at the recent Dragonlance movie. It was a flop, mostly because they spent their budget on A/B-list Hollywood voice actors (for some publicity cred) and not anything else (the 3D-CGI stuff was craptastic).

Fan service is rarely a good idea in these sorts of situations. I'm all for a canon-based Shadowrun movie, or a game, or whatever. However, the less input forced down the throats of the developers by fans the better. Too many viewpoints cause problems in any artistic venture.

The basic premise is solid. A series of cartoons or live action detailing the history of a very deep storyline. However, you're pushing it on the wrong people. I work in the film industry, and I'm telling you, the people to pitch this idea on are professional writers, not the people who own the rights to the license. You're way better off starting with people who have an interest in the story and then getting a license, rather than pushing the license on writers who don't care or have a personal stake in it. It never ends well.

It is an interesting concept that you bring up, but I believe that it is not a workable idea. For one thing "anime" generally refers to Japanese animation, which is not everyone's cup of tea when it comes down to drawing style. Also on top of that if you are "just getting into anime" then the problem you face is what types of shows are you watching? Some shows style of animation can be 20+ years old and isn't really a commonly used practice in the industry anymore.

The second (and bigger) problem is that Shadowrun is a concept. A very, very broad concept that is up to interpretation. Do you make the series black or pink mohawk? How gritty is the show/movie going to be? What tech level will you decide to use? How much do you want to keep and how much will you throw out the window? Lets take just the first question I asked and break it down as a problem. If you go black it can be suspenseful, but will piss off one side of the fan base. If you pink mohawk there will be tons of action, but still again you will piss off the other side of the fan base who don't see shadowrun that way. It is really a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of thing going on.

Third is that this has already been tried and failed when taking a closer look at what is going on. I mean they already made a shadowrunny kind of movie, and it was called Johnny Mnemonic... and it sucked balls. D&D also had a really terrible movie..... let's not even talk about that one. One way or another it is not a good marketable idea. No matter which way you take it, it's going to be upsetting to at least half the fan base of the game no matter how well it is done. At that point why even bother? After watching Johnny Mnemonic most people wouldn't watch another Shadowrun movie if you paid them.


On a side note. I thought it would be funny to have a Shadowrun write up of Johnny Mnemonic. Dealing with using dodge, combat rounds, social dice skills, hacking, ect. For instance the scene when Johnny goes into the slums and gets double crossed I was thinking that he uses his held action to set off the detonator, so on the first IP he wins initiative and successfully grapples the gun out of the other mans hand with 4 hits when the defender was only rolled 2 after taking a -1 penalty from the blast. Or the scene where Johnny calls up his 2/2 hacker contact on the net "who owes him a favor" and the dude totally freaks out because he knows just how much shit Johnny is in before getting hit by a "virus" aka either a databomb or blackhammer. Anyways it would probably be funny, but it would require sitting down and watching that movie over and over again. I mean I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I rather liked Johnny Mnemonic for the rather trashy film that it was. A lot of the effects were frankly laughable, and the characterisation was pretty damned poor too, but as a beer and pretzels kinda movie it was alright. But then I'll watch nigh anything, including Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (I don't recommend it. It's too bad to even be so bad it's funny. That being said, the trailer is good for a laugh simply for the number of times they mention the title. I still resent the two hours I spent dozing through the actual film.)

Re: A canon Shadowrun film. It would be impossible to please even half the fans, and anyone unfamiliar with the core material would be lost without so much exposition there wouldn't be any time left for action. It could work as a TV series, but I don't think there's a large enough market to justify the cost to do it well. There was a short lived children's cartoon series loosely based on the game Heavy Gear, which was actually quite well done, from what I saw of it, but SR is really not kiddy friendly, and I suspect if someone made even a PG version fans would be very annoyed.

As far as animation goes, it's not actually a great deal cheaper. Sure you don't need to worry about special effects, but you still need someone to do the drawing or rendering. If the OP specifically meant Japanese style animation, I wonder why he thinks that style would suit SR particularly? And even within that huge genre there are innumerable different approaches, techniques, and even genres within the genre.

I would love to see a SR Anime, done in the style of Appleseed. As long as I don't see Elves with rabbit ears, round headed dwarves with really big mouths, trolls with tentacular seeming horns, or orks with overly large tusks and facial features. It could be great or it could be Highlander II bad.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=19923

Doesn't anybody but me remember the movie that FASA made back in '91?

That little live action promotional piece? Mike Mulvihill dug up a copy on VHS for us back in the day at one of FASA's last Gen Cons and showed it to a bunch of us.

I'm still trying to scrub it from my brain

Actually, IIRC a couple years ago a digital copy surfaced, and someone was hosting it online... Been a while though, so no clue about now,

FASA made a movie???????

Granted, I was 14 at the time and hadn't yet gotten into RPGs.

Wasn;t really a movie. It was a live action promotional trailer that was only like 10 or 15 minutes long. Some video tapes got sent out to gaming stores, but very few people have ever seen it, or even know about it.

Basically, imagine a really, really bad late 80's hair-band music video. It was kinda horrific.

Catalyst Game Labs does not have the relevant rights to produce or sublicense a movie or animated show.

Also, the subject line of this post ... would have been a lot more useful if it had said what the thread was about.

Um one point Fanpro has nada to do with Shadowrun any more at least to my knowledge.

The owenership is Wizkids and lincened to In Media Res to Catalyst Game Labs.

Sorry Adam, I'll remember that next time. Back to the question, has CGL put any thought into a SR movie of any type?

As I said, we don't have the rights to do so. If we wanted to do something of that nature, we'd have to go back to WizKids for negotiations, and frankly, with their size and contacts, they're more likely to do license it out themselves then change our license to let us license it out to someone else ... all that would accomplish is make WizKids' piece of the pie smaller.

You know, I am sure they might have, but, since their license is only for written fiction and RPG rights. We have the Battletech/Mechwarrior Movie that is being worked on by WizKids, but there has never been anything said by WizKids, the intellectual property rights owners, about a ShadowRun movie. In fact, they only had 6 novels published under the old License with RoC, and only did their ShadowRun clix game for a 6 months or so, so they likely do not consider the property as having any potential profit for a mass media event, especially considering how the Abominatin..er...ShadowRun computer game, bombed(due to it having nothing to do with the actual continuuity of the setting..but..that is besides the point).

Ok... I don't want to yell... but WHAT DID I JUST SAY!? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. There already is a SR movie man. It's bad. It has Keanu Reeves in it, and is called Johnny Mnemonic. If there is going to be another SR movie, which I highly doubt since the last one was so terrible, it would probably not be animated. Animation is a style that the majority of the United States is not actually into. If SR was huge in Japan something might get done over there, but if you want to make the movie universal you are dealing with a concept that changes with every single persons interpretation of the rules. And there are soooo many, which is why this discussion forum exists. The other problem is if anyone goes to the table to bid to make a SR movie Johnny Mnemonic would have to be completely forgotten. Maybe in ten years... maybe. WizKids has not done well in bringing the RPG to different venues. It is a curse, and has had a very bad track record. The MMO SR looked like it could have been awesome, but of course it seems like it is pretty much in the can.

I think the average person is much more likely to remember a certain sci-fi/cyberpunk trilogy of movies before Johnny Mnemonic.



But the majority of people that are into animation are more likely to be interested in science-fiction than those that aren't ...

why should it be ASIA Animation?
Batman the Animated series, Batman of the Future . . something like that . .

The reason why I thought anime was the cost involved in live action or CGI or the combo of both. Being outside of the motion picture industry, I have no idea which cost what. As far as betting the gritty feel of SR, I think anime could do a good job. As far as fan contribution, I was referring to character concepts not script. Some of the character ideas and art on this forum alone bring to mind the very essence of SR. I mean where else are you going to see an obese troll fixer who rides around the sewers on an enlarged chair that is hauled around with a fork truck? Try doing that with live action actors, it could be done but I think it would cost more than an animated film. Anime or otherwise.

main point in cost-reduction for animated stuff is not needing actors and sets or parts of town to be warded off so you can film there . . you "just" draw it up on paper or in your computer and add in sounds and you're more or less done . . of course, something like the final fantasy movie where that girls hair alone was about 100 gig big is way over the top and still does not look particularly good in my eyes . .

I honestly think it might be a good idea to approach Joss Wheadon about this kind of project if SR was ever untangled enough to do this. And please, no Anime Shadowrun.

Emphasis mine.

-----

OK, Adam, which is it?

I whole-heartily agree. As mentioned in a previous thread, Firefly makes me think of SR.

Keep dreaming, fankids. Whedon would ruin a SR universe because it's not his baby. You may have noticed, but he's a pretty big fan of scripts and worlds he has full control over.

Also, he's done Firefly. Why would he do the same show again? I love people outside the industry talking about what would be a good idea and what wouldn't.

You want to know who would be good to approach about this? A no name director looking for an in. It's not his baby, so you need a reason for him to sign on and do several projects to complete it. And no huge name director would ever have anything to do with that. They have other projects, glamour projects, to keep them busy.

Ack. Why didn't someone catch that sooner? I've edited my original post -- we do not have the rights.

You're such a tease. =i)

To start off: I saw something a long time ago, a cartoon short based on what looked like Shadowrun, playing late at night on I think SciFi. It was definitely SR based, but for the life of me I have never seen it or find it again. And no, it wasn't Aeon Flux; the style was much different. I think it was Eastern European, German or Russian would be my guess.

Irregardless, I would love to see another SR animated or live action attempt. Do I think we'll get anything even close to faithful to my own personal vision of SR? Probably not. I'd probably be happy with anything we'd get, especially if Dunk was show in any capacity. It's a neat dream, but I don't think we'll ever get it.

No Whedon, please. I'm still trying to reign in the urge to beat geeks with, "Joss Whedon is my master now" shirts on. Kevin Smith writes better any way

(is a complete geek heretic)

There's enough room in my heart for more than one master. I'm a sucker for any writer that can do really good, really fun dialogue (something that, as a writer, I'm really weak at). Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Steven King, and Brian Bendis are all my Master.

why am i hearing that voice actress from the hellsing anime when i read the word master?

lovely voice tho, and with the kind of character the combo was oh so cute

Yeah, Whedon really does do his "baby" projects well and he might well ruin SR if approached. But giving it to a random no name director? That's about the worst idea I can imagine. Having no name actors in the show might work fine, but some untried director would just ruin it.

In no way do I consider Whedon a master, I just think his style of dialogue writing meshes really well with the SR universe.

My master is Dan Abnett.

ain't danny boy writing for warhammer 40k too?
there's at least one comic for WH40K with his name on it . .
more or less fitting *g*

Was it Night Watch or Day Watch? It's Russian and could give a kind of an SR feel.... kind of.

I'm pretty sure we could get Uwe Boll, that would solve the funding issue with doing a movie.

But then we'd get something like the M$ Shadowrun. Or worse.

Nope, sorry (well not really), Uwe Boll has been forbidden to make any more movies and the tax law that allowed him to make his movies has been re-written / killed just so that he can't use it. Plan 9 was bad but, I can't think of any laws that were created or otherwise revised to prohibit Ed Wood from making movies. Uwe Boll's movies were bad and he deserves to be pelted with garbage for his crimes of bad taste & even worse ethics.

Getting kind in your old age, Grep?

Just Garbage? I'd be pelting him with something else, myself.

Or, better yet, finding a Troll to pelt stuff at him. Better throwing arm.

What, you mean Uwe Boll can't make films to let the mafia launder their money anymore? For shame. What will they do now to make their hard earned cash look legit?

My pick would be a toss up between Tyler Perry, Joel Schumacher, the dude who made showgirls, or McG to direct a Shadowrun movie.... if Uwe Boll decides not to do it of course. Hummmm... Why do I feel so dirty all of the sudden?

Now if someone was able to combine showgirls with Johnny Mnemonic.... interesting....

Lesbian Elven Stripper Ninjas again?

No the chick with the wired reflexes who has the black shakes is doing a dance to seduce Keanu and he says something like "Woah."

She starts to actually get the black shakes while doing the strip dance for him and he take it as a sign that she wants him. In the end she recovers and actually says she is on her period. The End.

No name directors aren't untested. Christopher Nolan was a no name until Memento. Doesn't mean his films weren't bloody impressive before then. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro? Were they talentless before making Amalie? How about Guillermo Del Toro? Think that guy was a hack before he made a huge name for himself in Hollywood? Or maybe you just think David Lean was rubbish before he made Bridge on the River Kwai.

Really, Hatspur, you have to increase your knowledge of how it works in the industry. The way you get fan projects done well is to get a highly talented director before he's well established. That's how you get quality without the ego to flatout refuse the project, or only do it if he can change it to the point that it's unrecognisable.

You know what Bruce Timm had done before he directed Batman: The Animated Series? Nada. Nothing. Zilch. He was an animator. But he had the talent to direct, and he jumped on an offered project and made it his baby. He did it well, and produced arguably the best Batman anyone's ever seen.

Saburo Hashimoto? The guy who did Gargoyles? One animated series no one watched. So when he saw a project with strong writing, he jumped all over it.

That's how it works, man. Small name director, great writing. Secret to a successfully orchestrating an existing product.

No, definitely not. This would have been the early to mid 90s when I saw it. From what I remember, it was two sammies (one ork, one human) and a female hacker trying to break into an installation and screwing it up, then trying to pull their asses out of the fire they'd lit.

I'll let you guess how it ends

I watched it! Even did up some fiction, worked the setting into the SR world, and had rules for playing them up on my site. (And again, I say, I really have to get that running again.)

Ahh... This is still around. I submitted them to the Avalon Mists fanzine back in '98. They're the SR2 version, but whatever

http://avmists.gargoyles-fans.org/sept_gam2.html

Bull

Edit Huh, looks like they're SR3 after all. I must have updated them just before sending that in.