Venom writers tapped for live-action adaptation of One-Punch Man

By Sam Barsanti | April 22, 2020 | 12:18am

Aux Features Film

Venom writers tapped for live-action adaptation of One-Punch Man

A One-Punch Man cosplayer Photo: Mario Tama

Watch out Akira and My Hero Academia and every other manga/anime adaptation currently collecting dust on a movie studio’s shelf: You’ve got a new friend, and it involves a ridiculously powerful bald guy named Saitama. According to Variety, Sony has hired Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinknker—the writers behind Venom and the two recent Jumani movies—to write a live-action adaptation of hit webcomic/manga/anime series One-Punch Man. The studio is also apparently “very high” on One-Punch Man given how popular its existing versions are, and it’s naturally really excited about One-Punch Man’s potential for becoming another big franchise. Wait, what? A franchise based on something other than an American comic book? That’s absurd! (Granted, it’s basically a Japanese comic book, and it is about a superhero, but it’s still totally different from all of those Spider-Mans and Justice Leagues you see running around.)

For those who don’t know, One-Punch Man is a superhero comedy series set in a world where monsters and supervillains run rampant on the Earth, inspiring the formation of an officially sanctioned organization of superheroes to fight them. Saitama is a young freelance hero who has trained his mind and body so well that he can defeat anyone with a single… actually, we won’t spoil it. He does his superhero stuff just for fun, even though he’s bored with how easily he can defeat every villain, which stands in contrast to the Hero Association, which keeps track of every hero’s good deeds and ranks them. At the risk of further encouraging Sony, it does seem like it should be pretty easy to make a successful movie out of the property.