TriStar Announces Metropolis Premier

TriStar Pictures has officially announced that Metropolis will begin its American theatrical release on January 25th at the AMC Empire 25 theater in New York City.

In the late 1940s, long before Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion established Osamu Tezuka as one of the most influential animators of all time, the legendary illustrator created the classic manga Metropolis. Set in the future, Metropolis is a grand city-state populated by humans and robots, the cohabitants of a strictly segmented society. Amidst the chaos created by anti-robot factions, detective Shunsaku Ban and his sidekick Ken-ichi are searching for rebel scientist Dr. Laughton, to arrest him and seize his latest creation, Tima, a beautiful young girl. Tima is a new top-of the-line android created to succeed the leader of Metropolis. When they locate them, Shunsaku quickly comes to realize that the eccentric scientist is beyond their reach, protected by a powerful man and his fierce desire to reclaim a tragic figure from his past.

More than fifty years since it was first imagined, Tezuka’s vision of the inability of scientific progress to fulfill basic human needs — in spite of its mechanizing even the most fundamental aspects of life — confirms him as a prophet as well as a fabulist. Directed by Rintaro and written by Katsuhiro Otomo, the retro-futurism of the story – as well as its precautionary tale — is spectacularly rendered in its visual style, combining the best in Japanese cel animation with the latest in digital technology. Metropolis has been selected to be shown at a number of international film festivals including Locarno, Sitges and Hamburg.

Source: Anime News Service

Article courtesy of Scott Green