Hollywood is going to keep trying until they get this whole "live-action anime adaptation" thing right, huh? For some reason, Tinsletown seems incapable of processing the fact that anime fans actually enjoy animation. To most studio execs, until anime gets run through the meat grinder for creativity that is a live-action adaptation, the property is somehow less legitimate than other forms of media.
Take the box office success of Dragonball Super: Super Hero this weekend. Media outlets across the country were surprised that an anime film somehow climbed to the top of the box office to best Idris Elba's Beast. Now, if Dragonball's success were a one-off, it'd be understandable. However, the headlines of Hollywood rags have printed the same headline about Dragonball since the series returned to cinemas in 2014. Instead of developing their own original animated features equivalent to anime, Hollywood always opts to eviscerate anime properties by turning them into live-action abominations. And now Amazon Prime has its sights on adapting the beloved film Paprika into a live-action series.
Cathy Yan (Birds of Prey, Dead Pigs) will executive produce and direct the live-action series Paprika, based on the Yasutaka Tsutsui novel of the same name, for Amazon Studios and Hivemind, Deadline has learned. Amazon declined comment. Along with Yan, her producing partner Ash Sarohia will also executive produce under their Rewild banner, as well as Masi Oka, and Hivemind's Jason F. Brown.
