March 2, 2004
Things are indeed changing...
From
trivialbeing.net, as usual. Apparently someone from their forums called "KameKase" picked up something written by Tiffany Grant. I'm not sure how old it is, but knowing the fact that eva.trivialbeing.net and other sites are always probing for new movie news, I'd say it's pretty recent.
I'd like to point out however that a lot of it was cut and pasted from Tiffany Grant's information found above. I'll bold the text that's new...to me at least.
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I noticed there have been a number of posts regarding the moive, and this is a little essay I have written for your perusal. I hope it clears some things up. - TG
First off, there are 26 TV episodes and two movies in the Eva library. The first goal is to produce a movie that encapsulates the most important elements of the early part of the series so that the viewer will not have to have seen the aforementioned 15 or so hours of video - AND - leave room for one or two (maybe more?) follow up films that can finish off the story.
The movie is being produced jointly by Gainax (of course), ADV and WETA. If you are somehow NOT familiar with the WETA Workshop, this is the incredible studio founded by Peter Jackson in New Zealand that created the Lord of the Rings films. By watching the fantastic documentaries on the LOTR DVDs, you can get an excellent idea of the kind of attention to detail that is being given to everything.
Also, if you have read the LOTR, I think you will see that the
characters in that iconic tome have been very faithfully brought to life and not, as you put it, "screwed up." In fact, in a film adaptation of the second most read book in the English language (the Bible is the first), it is pretty well unanimously agreed that WETA got it exactly right. Bearing that in mind, I have every reason to have confidence that the same folks who hand glued every hair on each hobbit foot, will do a spectacular job with our NGE heroes.
Keep in mind that WETA will not be doing this in a vacuum either, as they will be supervised by people at both Gainax and ADV (such as my husband, of course).
As for the "slug" names used in the preliminary script (NOT
the final version!!!) which appear on the production drawings, they are only used so as not to refer to them as "Pilot A" and "Captain B" etc. As has been widely discussed, the cast will be international, and mostly of European descent. Meaning, for example, if Daniel Radcliffe (Anime Insider's suggestion - NOT mine!) were to play the
lead male role, it would be pretty stupid to call an ENGLISH
boy "Shinji."
The show is in VERY early stages of pre-production, so nothing is final yet. ADV was just trying to share a little Eva goodness with everyone by showing off some of the thousands of production drawings that have been produced. I think they are fabulous, personally, and I eagerly await each new development in the project.
I believe you can all rest easy knowing that the films will be
everything and more that we ever thought they could be.
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Change is happening, they must tred the path carefully.