Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Heroes, Veronica Mars) will lend her voice to the animated movie “Astro Boy“, according to Variety.
Bell joins Nicolas Cage, Scarlett Johansson, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy and Freddie Highmore.
To be directed by David Bowers using a script from Timothy Harris, Astro Boy is about a young robot with incredible powers created by a brilliant scientist to replace the son he has lost. Unable to fulfill the grieving father's expectations, our hero embarks on a journey in search of acceptance, experiencing betrayal and a netherworld of robot gladiators, before he returns to save Metro City and reconcile with the man who had rejected him.
The film is currently scheduled to be released next year.
Wow, being near 50 years old myself, I loved to get up on Sundays as a kid and watch Astro Boy!
While growing up some syndicates renamed the Astro Boy to JetBoy or something other to that effect. I assume to avoid some kind of reairing on tv legals, but he was originally named Astro Boy!
I am so happy my childhood cartoon hero has been reclaimed and made into a graphically polished art form that animators of today have the ability to do.
The wonderful actors chosen to voice over even makes this more thrilling.
The plot is original too with the robot replacing the creators deceased son so any children out there that have ever felt discarded or unable to please their parents would find quite a bit of insight into the plot.
I urge everyone, even adults to watch the new Astro Boy movie when it comes out in 2009, and don’t mind the seemingly out of place, 50 year old woman sitting in the next row because that will likely be me, reliving my favorite childhood Sunday morning.