Back in 2009, Samurai Jack tempted J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot to create a feature length film based on the four-time, Emmy-award winning, animated television series. Samurai Jack is an animated series created by Genndy Tartakovsky in 2001 that aired on Cartoon Network for three seasons. Abrams was keen on developing an animated movie with Paramount Pictures that combined traditional 2-D animation with stereoscopic 3-D.
Now, it looks like another director of note has his eye on this animated show known for its uniquely detailed and outline-free style of animation and cinematic quality and pacing. Tarsem Singh, coming off the premiere of Immortals, has expressed interest in directing a live-action feature-length film version of Samurai Jack. He told THR:
“It’s brilliant. The speed, it embraces where it comes from. I find that comic strip films are halfway grounded. They don’t play my chord. But I love Samurai Jack. I love the animation.”
For a director known for lusciously rich visuals, Singh is undoubtedly attracted to Samurai Jack’s “epic style, pace and art.” ‘Course, Singh’s current project is Relativity’s Snow White film, Mirror Mirror. Cartoon Network, who owns the rights to Samurai Jack, has not yet made a formal statement confirming development on this potential project.
Synopsis of the animated series, Samurai Jack:
Samurai Jack is a 4-time Emmy award-winning American animated television series created by animator Genndy Tartakovsky that aired on Cartoon Network from 2001 until 2004. It is noted for its highly detailed, outline-free, masking-based animation, as well as its cinematic style and pacing.
The plots of individual episodes ranged from dark and epic to light-hearted and comic, but typically follow Jack in his singular quest to find a method of traveling back in time. Many of the battle scenes in the series are reminiscent of samurai films, and since Jack’s robotic enemies “bleed” oil or electricity and monsters/aliens bleed slime or goo, the series was able to exhibit the action of these films while avoiding censorship for violence.
