FUNimation Entertainment and Electronic Arts have announced an agreement to create an anime feature-length movie based on the hugely popular video game franchise Mass Effect.  The Tokyo-based anime production house T.O. Entertainment has signed on as co-producer of the film.  Production on the film, which is an epic science fiction adventure set in a vast universe filled with dangerous alien lifeforms and strange, uncharted planets, has already begun.  The Mass Effect anime feature will be released for home video and digital downloading in the summer of 2012.

 

Casey Hudson of EA’s BioWare will serve as an executive producer of the film along with Funimation’s Gen Fukunaga.  This is the first major announcement from FUNimation since it was sold by its former parent, the Navarre Corporation, to a group of investors led by FUNimation founder Fukunaga (see “Navarre Sells FUNimation”).

 

Mass Effect, which IGN rated the #1 Xbox 360 game of all time, is also in development as a live-action feature film (see “'Mass Effect' Movie”), and has also been adapted into a comic book series by Dark Horse (see “EA, Dark Horse Team Up for 'Mass Effect'”).