Justin Lin has been named the new director of Sony’s upcoming One Punch Man film.
Taiwanese film director Justin Lin’s been tapped to direct a film for Sony. The news comes in the wake of him leaving his directorial position for Fast X, the next entry in the Fast and Furious series set to release on May 19, 2023, over creative differences, according to a message shared on the franchise's Twitter. He is still tied to the project as a producer, though.
The film Lin’s been chosen to direct has quite the following already, with it being the popular manga adaptation One Punch Man. The webcomic-turned-manga-turned-anime follows an overpowered superhero saving the day while also yearning for more of a challenging foe as all the ones he faces go down in a single punch. While we’ve seen Saitama in animation, pages, and video games, we've never seen him in a live-action setting until now.
According to Deadline, the live-action adaptation also has Lin earmarked as its producer and he’s also going to work with the writing team consisting of Jumanji: The Next Level and Venom writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner in order to possibly help expedite that side of production. The report also notes that Sony aims to start its proper production by the end of the year.
On top of its new director and producer, One Punch Man also has both Avi and Ari Arad on board as producers for Arad Productions. If their names ring any bells, they worked with Sony on Venom and have a wide net of superhero movies under their belt like X-Men, the Spider-Man film series, and Iron Man.
One-Punch Man skyrocketed in popularity thanks in large part to the zaniness of this man so powerful that he can defeat anyone in a single punch and the fact that at some point, he’s just bored of it all. After all, we don’t think anyone wants to do the exact same thing over and over knowing what the outcome will be. The manga is successful, netting several awards and becoming a must-read for anime fanatics.