French director Alexandre Aja has received the financial backing to make his dream project, a $100 million live-action version of Buichi Terasawa’s Space Pirate Cobra manga. Pre-production will begin this fall with actual filming slated for next spring and the film’s theatrical debut set for the summer of 2013. 

 

A charter member of the "Splat Pack," Aja has already developed a cult following among horror enthusiasts for his direction of The Hills Have Eyes and Piranha 3-D, which he brought in for under $25 million. Last August Aja acquired the rights to Space Pirate Cobra and announced his attention to make a live-action film in large part because the anime series based on the Terasawa manga was a childhood favorite (see “Cobra: Space Pirate”).

 

According to Variety, the Paris-based Onyx films and the European telco giant Orange will provide the financing for the Space Pirate Cobra adaptation. Terasawa’s old school seinen manga series, which has been a hit in Europe as well as the Far East, has sold over 35 million volumes in Japan alone since it debuted in 1978.

 

Aja released a poster for his new film that has genre movie fans salivating (see above).