In a wildly unexpected move, Sega has partnered with Picturestart to announce a Space Channel 5 movie and also a Comix Zone movie.
Barry Battles (The Baytown Outlaws) and Nir Paniry (Extracted) will write the Space Channel 5 movie, which will be a “comedy/dance adaptation” of the 1999 Dreamcast game that follows “a hapless fast-food worker who is recruited by a freedom reporter from the future to save the world from aliens using the one thing that unites all people on the planet: our love of silly viral dances.”
Meanwhile, Mae Catt (Young Justice, Dragons: The Nine Realms) will write the Comix Zone movie, which will be based on the 1995 Sega Genesis game and “follows a jaded comic book creator and a young, queer writer of color who, when sucked into the final issue of his popular series, must put aside their differences to stop a dangerous supervillain from sowing complete destruction — and in the process wittily explore the ever-evolving power of storytelling itself.”
Royce Reeves-Darby and Erik Feig of Picturestart and Sega Vice President Co-COO Shuji Utsumi will oversee the two movies. Toru Nakahara, producer for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise and Sonic Prime executive producer, will produce on both films, as will Samie Kim Falvey at Picturestart. Sega game director Takumi Yoshinaga will be part of the Space Channel 5 production, and Sega game producer Kagasei Shimomura will be involved with the Comix Zone movie.
Details on when these movies are expected to enter production have not been provided, nor has Sega offered a rationale for why these aging game properties are receiving a film adaptation now. Nonetheless, they will be in good company with other unexpected video game movies, like Streets of Rage and whatever Atlus is cooking up.
