Marza Animation Planet

Marza Animation Planet posts Sonic The Night of the Werehog short on YouTube for the first time

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You’re probably thinking: “I’ve seen this already on YouTube, why is this news?”. Well, aside from Sonic Unleashed articles being an easy way to increase traffic, it is notable that Marza Animation Planet has posted their short film Sonic The Night of the Werehog on YouTube officially for the first time as the video has always only existed thanks to fan rips or low resolution uploads from SEGA PR. It’s nice to see SEGA and Marza showing Sonic and his ghostly friends some love again, as we had a Halloween sequel posted just a few months ago. Check the short out for yourself straight from the studio that made it!

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Marza Animation releases Halloween animated short “Ghost Tale”, a Sonic Unleashed: Night of the Werehog sequel

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SEGA’s animation studio, Marza Animation Planet, has been teasing something relating to the ghost girl and her two ghostly admirers throughout the year and we finally know what that is!

As a Halloween treat, Marza Animation Planet released “Ghost Tale”, an animated short featuring the ghosts from 2008’s “Sonic Unleashed: Night of the Werehog” animated short. While Sonic does not feature, there is a visual of the werehog on a poster in the background. It’s great seeing these fan favorite characters return, and here’s hoping the appear in more animated shorts or other media in the future!

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SEGA releases Sonic the Hedgehog movie press release

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I know all the Sonic the Hedgehog fans around the world are wondering what the ‘live-action CG animation’ Sonic the Hedgehog film brings to theaters. We already know that SEGA is teasing a November 15, 2019 release date since we covered it.

Now SEGA has sent out the official press release about the upcoming movie, having quotes from people involved including SEGA Holdings CEO Haruki Satomi, Paramount Pictures CEO Jim Gianopulos and Producer Neal H. Moritz.

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SEGA News Bits: Sonic movie director & producers revealed discussion

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Welcome to another installment of our SEGA News Bits series, this time we will be discussing the news about the Sonic movie getting its director and producers announced. We will look at what this means, how we feel about the slow moving project and if we even trust Sony Pictures with a Sonic movie. Yes, we discuss the addition of Tim Miller, famous Deadpool director, joining the Sonic movie as a executive producer as well. Give it a listen and like always you can tell us what you think about all this Sonic movie news by leaving us a comment below.

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Producers for Sony’s Sonic the Hedgehog Movie revealed, Deadpool director Tim Miller involved as executive producer

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The Sonic the Hedgehog Movie (Not to be confused with the 1996 Sonic the Hedgehog OVA) is still in production, and we’ve recently learned new information about the movie. Probably the most notable detail is that Tim Miller, director of the critically and commercially successful Deadpool movie, is involved with the Sonic the Hedgehog movie as an executive producer. Joining him is long time Blur Studio collaborator Jeff Fowler, and Neal H. Moritz of Fast and Furious fame as a producer.

Millar’s comments about his cohort Jeff:

“Jeff is an incredible director with strong story instincts. The world of Sonic presents the perfect opportunity for him to leverage his experience in animation to bring new dimension to this iconic character.”

On top of Blue Studio and Sony Picture Entertainment being involved, SEGA animation subsidiary Marza Animation Planet will help with production, with staff Takeshi Ito and Mie Onishi also joining as producers. For context, Marza Animation Planet being the animation studio behind the CGI cutscenes in varies SEGA titles such as the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva series and Sonic the Hedgehog, and helped with 3D artwork illustrations for some Nintendo titles such as Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon.

While there’s nothing on the production itself, it’s slated to be “a hybrid CG-animated/live-action family film”, still with a tentative 2018 release.

[Source: Hollywood Reporter]

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Marza Animation Planet’s short film “Moom” gets a trailer

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SEGA’s in-house animation studio Marza Animation Planet has teamed up with Tonko House and Craftar to make a upcoming short film based on a illustrated book called ‘Moom‘. The film is set to be a 13 minutes long and will be directed by Oscar nominated directors Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo (known for The Dam Keeper).

Moom is a illustrated book by Genki Kawamura and Yuki Mashiko, you can find more information on the project over at Tonko House’s website. Marza Animation Planet showed off animation shorts using some of the assets from this trailer, running in Unreal 4 before and its nice to see they are doing something with them.

[Via The Forums]

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SEGA Sammy’s Marza Animation Planet working with Capcom on CG Resident Evil movie

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While this is leaning towards Capcom news, it’s worth newsing here on SEGAbits. SEGA Sammy Holdings owned Marza Animation Planet, the animation group responsible for several SEGA CG cutscenes and the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, has joined forces with Capcom to produce a CG Biohazard/Resident Evil movie slated for a 2017 worldwide release. Japanese gaming site Inside reports that Ju-on: The Grudge creator and filmmaker Takashi Shimizu (creator of Ju-on) will be executive producer, Takanori Tsujimoto will direct, and Psycho-Pass writer Makoto Fukami is working on the script.

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SEGA’s Marza studio demos Unreal Engine 4 animations

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SEGA-Sammy owned CGI animation studio Marza Animation Planet has been plenty busy since they debuted in early 2006 by doing opening animations on various SEGA games (including Night of the Werehog animated short), working on the CGI movie ‘Space Pirate Captain Harlock‘ and even being confirmed as doing the CGI for Sony Pictures ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ theatrical film. Seems that the company is always looking ahead and are now getting their feet wet by trying animations in Unreal Engine 4, showing off detailed animations running on the primarily used game engine.

These are ‘real-time demos’ shown off to Japanese gaming website 4Gamer. Marza talks about how making animations in a game engine is new to them and how impress they are with what is possible. This could help SEGA’s development team create faster assets and cut development time in games. The demos they showed off included Happy Forest (above), Ultimate Bowl and Kuro 1.2 in-engine effects . To see the other tech demos hit the jump.

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Sony and SEGA to team up for a series of Sonic the Hedgehog movies, films to be animated by Marza Animation Planet

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The Hollywood Reporter has dropped a bombshell on Sonic fans by way of the announcement of a Sonic the Hedgehog movie! The film is reported to be a partnership between Sony Pictures Entertainment and SEGA, with animation handled by SEGA’s own Marza Animation Planet (of Night of the Werehog fame). The movie is described as “a hybrid CG-animated/live-action feature” is to be produced by Neal Moritz (22 Jump Street), Takeshi Ito and Mie Onishi of Marza, and executive produced by Toby Ascher with a screenplay written by Upright Citizens Brigade alums Evan Susser and Van Robichaux. Sonic and Eggman are the only confirmed characters thus far. Columbia Pictures president of production Hannah Minghella said “There are limitless stories to tell with a character like Sonic the Hedgehog and a built-in international fan base. Along with our wonderful creative partners at Marza, we’re looking to capture everything that generations of fans know and love about Sonic while also growing his audience wider than ever before.” Marza CEO Masanao Maeda added, “Sonic has had dozens of adventures on the console and the small screen, and we’re thrilled that he’s now coming to the big screen. Sony Pictures has had great success with hybrid animated and live-action features, and we’re confident that this collaboration will bring a fresh take to Sonic, while still capturing everything that the fans love about him.”

We’ll share more info as soon as we hear it!

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Marza Animation Planet’s “Harlock: Space Pirate” movie headed to Netflix August 1st

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IGN has revealed that “Harlock: Space Pirate”, an animated film from the SEGA owned Marza Animation Planet, will be releasing exclusively to Netflix in all territories beginning August 1st. The movie is a sci-fi action adventure based on the character from Leiji Matsumo’s Space Pirate Captain Harlock manga series. Marza Animation Planet is probably best known to SEGA fans as the group that animated the Sonic the Hedgehog “Night of the Werehog” short film, as well as animating cutscenes for SEGA games including Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd, Sonic Colors, and Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg.

We’ll keep you posted on any promotional materials that may release between then and now, and once the film releases I think a SEGA Cinema is in order!

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Marza Animation Planet’s next movie is called ‘Robodog’

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If you didn’t know, SEGA-Sammy own a CGI animated studio called Marza Animation Planet, who is co-producing the Captain Harlock movie.

The studio has now announced its new film which has begun pre-production and will be their first original film. They got Henry F. Anderson III (Gnomeo & Juliet) directing, Paul Wang (Astro Boy, TMNT) producing and Jeannette Manifold (Happy Feet, All Dogs Go to Heaven) as head of production. Its based on a script by Robert Reese.

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Want a New English Trailer for Marza’s Captain Harlock Movie? Well Here You Go

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UPDATE: So this trailer keeps being taken down from Youtube. If the video above gets taken down again you can watch it here on Dailymotion.

If you weren’t sure yet if the Captain Harlock movie Marza Animation Planet is working on is actually coming to the west, a new English trailer got leaked yesterday from the site of the company that does the marketing for the film in the west. This trailer shows two and a half minutes of footage, mostly with a very not-Japanese song being played over it. I have to say, it’s looking pretty dang good.

Toei also released a couple of other trailers earlier this year and released a small 30 second teaser earlier this week. Besides this, merch and also a localized version of the script has been leaked, so there may be spoilers on the internet. The Japanese release date is September 7th, dates for other countries aren’t known yet.

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Marza Animation Planet trademarks “Luna’s Arc”

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Marza Animation Planet, a SEGA-Sammy owned CGI animation studio has trademarked the title ‘Luna’s Arc’.

This could be the title to their next film, which they chose the script from their online competition: Story Circus.  They have done the competition two years in a row and have picked up two full scripts to do an animated film on. Who knows, maybe next year us SEGAbit people will submit some scripts.

As for what this could be, who knows. Luna is Italian/Spanish for moon, which could me a space sort of film. What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

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Sonic Generations Lost CG Intro – now with clean footage!

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Back in January of 2012, I shared a video I had put together which featured all the existing Sonic Generations CG footage. As many Sonic fans know, the game lacked a proper post-title screen CG intro, instead only offering up the same modern and classic Sonic footage seen in the initial teaser trailer for the game. By sifting through various trailers, commercials and promotional event videos I put together the most complete collection of CG Sonic Generations clips. Following the Marza Animation Planet story posted yesterday, I checked out the Marza website and discovered a cool thirty second clip featuring both Sonics running through City Escape and Rooftop Run. Unlike past videos, the clip was crisp and uncut, so I worked the improved footage into my old compilation video and present the revised version to you. Enjoy!

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