At the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which opened on Monday in France, anime production company Genco revealed plans for an adaptation of Naoki Urasawa's award-winning science fiction manga Pluto.

Pluto is based on Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) series, taking its title from a villain in one of its story arcs. It was serialized in Big Comic Original between 2003 and 2009 and has been published in eight compiled volumes. The series is published in North America by VIZ Media.

Genco is exhibiting a poster of Pluto at MIFA, a professional marketplace at the Annecy festival where producers can make project pitches as they seek partners for distribution and funding of animated works. The question of funding for an anime adaptation of Pluto previously surfaced at the 2012 Japan Expo in Paris, which Urasawa attended.

At the time, producer Masao Maruyama, who worked on the anime adaptation of Urasawa's Monster manga, indicated that securing funding for a complete adaptation of Pluto would be difficult because few companies today want to fund an extended production. Maruyama estimated that a complete adaptation of Pluto could approximately take 39 episodes, or three broadcast cours.

Crunchyroll reports that the solicitation for a Pluto anime indicates the project has an estimated completion date of 2020.

Source: Crunchyroll.fr

News submitted by Nidhoeggr

Pluto on MAL