I’ll take a sleek animated show over a Mega Man movie, thanks
Deciding what worlds should be adapted into what medium is a tricky idea. You have options: television, limited/mini-series, movies, OVAs. In the case of Mega Man the powers that be have overwhelmingly sided towards TV, but that’s going to change if this new project ever gets off the ground. As of the end of 2021, the Mega Man movie is still live-action, but it’s now a Netflix project.
Six years ago 20th Century Fox teased a Mega Man film. Since then it’s been on ice, but every year or so someone who was working on it would hype it up. Now, in late 2021, based on the site of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s production company Supermarche, we have some semblance of where the Mega Man movie is headed:
“Henry, Rel, and their in-house producer Orlee-Rose Strauss maintain an active development slate. Features in the works include: an adaptation of Capcom’s Mega Man which they wrote and are directing.”
There’s just…so many wrong ways this can go. Netflix and live-action adaptations: it’s a potential recipe for disaster. Meanwhile, there’s such an easy way to make a slam dunk Mega Man. Hire a quality animation studio, add in some universal themes and skew toward older fans while keeping it accessible, make the action memorable, and have him battle a bunch of well-written unique bots until he reaches Wily at the end of the final season. You can even add that moment when Mega Man considers ending Wily once and for all at the end of MM7.
As far as the direction of the live-action version: maybe Jim Carrey will play Wily? Who knows!