From Sony Pictures comes "Chappie," a futuristic sci-fi action film that stars Dev Patel of "Slumdog Millionaire" fame as the creator of a droid reprogrammed to "think and feel," co-stars include Hugh Jackman, Sharlto Copley and Sigourney Weaver; the film is led by "Elysium" and "District 9" director Neil Blomkamp.
Anime fans were quick to point out that the robot playing the title role bears a similar appearance to the protagonist of classic manga "Appleseed." Blomkamp reveals that he drew inspiration from the Japanese comic in an interview via Anime News Network.
"Masamune Shirow, he has one robot called Briareos that has these rabbit ears. I just love that as a design feature, so I put that on the robot in short," revealed the director.
"When I made 'Chappie,' I was like, 'obiviously, the robot will be based on that robot, and the fictional company that made that robot will make the fictional robots in the full feature film."
"Appleseed" was created by Masamune Shirow in 1985, the story follows futuristic police enforcers Deunan Knute and cyborg Briareos Hecatonchires in protecting the fictional city of Olympus in a post-apocalpytic future.
Three "Appleseed" OVA's were released - the first one came in out in 1989 under Bandai Visual and its plot was somewhat closer to that in the manga, its follow up came over a decade after in 2004 with a sequel in 2007 titled "Appleseed Ex Machina."
A CG film was released July last year titled "Appleseed Alpha." Anime New Network's Zack Metschy called it "the most visually stunning Appleseed movie yet."
"Chappie's" early stages began when Blomkamp wrote the film back when he was 23, originally intended to be a short movie. The title was later on commissioned to be a feature length film by Columbia Pictures in 2012.
