Astro Boy Reboot's 1st Image Unveiled

French/Monacan/Japanese project to use both 2D and CG animation

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The official website for the French, Monacan, and Japanese Astro Boy reboot project is now hosting a background image featuring the title character.

Japan's Tezuka Productions, France's Caribara Animation, and Monaco's Shibuya Productions are collaborating on the series using both 2D and CG techniques. The show's planned 26 episodes will target children from eight to twelve years of age, and Shibuya Productions founder Cedric Biscay notes that the producers have the right to create a brand new story, as Tezuka Productions owns the intellectual property to thefranchise.

Tezuka Productions and YTV are also developing a separate Little Astro Boy series of five-to-seven minute "edutainment" shorts. These shorts are targeted at three- to five-year-old children.

This is not the first time that Osamu Tezuka's 1952-1968 manga inspired overseas works. Hong Kong animation studio IMAGI produced the computer-animated film version of Astro Boy with distributorSummit Entertainment in 2009. A joint production between Tezuka Productions and Nigerian television station Chanel TV created a television animation project (pictured left) earlier this year. Back in Japan, the manga inspired the country's first full-fledged half-hour television anime series in 1963, followed by a color television series in 1980 and a remake in 2003