Although it seems that the coming years will see plenty of giant battling monster movies already, everything from Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim to the Godzilla reboot to Monsterpocalypse, Columbia Pictures has optioned the 2007 Japanese cult hit Big Man Japan for a remake and sequel, harkening back to the days when all of our giant battling monster movies were Japanese imports—and where did that get the American economy, hmmmmm? Anyway, the midnight-movie favorite (which hit U.S. shores in 2009) concerns the head of the Department Of Monster Prevention and his efforts to protect his fellow citizens from attack, and the original was told in an often-surreal, satirical mockumentary format that made the protagonist’s epic battles mostly a comic counterpoint to the various indignities of his daily life. But considering the remake and its already-guaranteed follow-up will be produced by Neal Moritz of Fast Five, Battle: Los Angeles, and I Am Legend fame, somehow we’d guess that the Americanized copy will reverse that balance, and as so often happens, make something bigger and louder in lieu of competing with Japan’s engineering ingenuity.
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