Here’s the Mass Effect Movie You Haven’t Been Waiting For

?Because you’ve been waiting for a big-budget, live-action Hollywood movie based on the hit sci-fi videogame franchise from EA and Bioware, right? Yeah, this isn’t it. From the press release:

BioWare?, a division of leading video game publisher Electronic Arts
Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and FUNimation? Entertainment, the leading
distributor of Japanese animation in North America, announced today an
agreement to create an anime feature film adapted from one of the video
game industry’s most revered franchises, Mass Effect?.
Tokyo-based anime and international feature film production company T.O
Entertainment, Inc. has signed on as a co-producer on the video. Based
on the Mass Effect universe, the anime video will tell the tale
of an epic science fiction adventure set in a vast universe filled with
dangerous alien life and mysterious, uncharted planets.

Before any anime fans get too excited, I should point out that T.O. Entertainment is a Korean company, and thus the movie won’t be proper anime. I’m trying not to be an anime snob, but as most anime fans will agree with me, Korean animation is often lacking compared to its Japanese counterparts. It may be just as pretty, it may be just as imaginative, but there is something the Japanese are doing that the Koreans are not, which is why Korean animation hasn’t taken off in the same Japanese anime has. Still, hopefully with an already established world and storyline, and a decent budget from EA, we’ll end up with something quite good. I just won’t hold my breath.