The First Slam Dunk (movie)
 

The Slam Dunk franchise is getting an anime movie. Announced today with unknown release date.

Official site is up

https://slamdunk-movie.jp/

Or you could make Vagabond, which has never had any sort of adaptation. Just saying.

Seriously?! Was it Inoue who hated the original anime of this?

Anyway this is still one of the best sports series we’ve had (though Giant Killing and Be Blues still take the top spots, heh), so yeah, color me intrigued.

Well, excuse me, but I'm gonna go sit in the corner and sing "Sekai ga Owaru Made wa".

the tensei is back

If they want to make easy money (they do), bringing back a popular series on the big screen is the best way to do it. It already started becoming a trend those past couple years, and I think it's going to explode after what happened with Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Vagabond has sold more volumes than any manga never adapted into an anime.

Slam Dunk is almost technically a religion in the Philippines so much so that the names of the characters are colloquial slang.

Maybe studios are being intimidated by the manga's artstyle. Vagabond is world-famous because of it. You need a studio/team that's either very skilled, resourceful & confident or a studio who just doesn't care (like the team who worked on the upcoming Ex-Arm anime, they really don't give a shit :heh).

Believe it or not, but I think Toei would be a right studio. When they DO give a damn, they pretty much can outdo any other studio out there. Ufotable, of course, could potentially do it, but I always felt their artstyle waas a little bit too... clean. I'm not sure how to describe it, since my English skill suddenly took a nosedive at the time of writing this sentence, sorry :p

My third choice would be David Production. They wouldn't be able to replicate the artstyle, but they usually get the direction right, which is even more important.

Granted, we are still talking about an unfinished manga, based on the very much finished classic novel (even though manga has a number of huge deviations from the book). And said novel has been adapted a countless number of times as a live action movies/TV dramas. One of the movies, starring Toshiro Mifune, even won an Oscar.

I dunno guys... as much as I love Vagabond, I think any anime adaptation will fail our expectations. There’s more chances of his REAL to be adapted tbh.

I don't doubt that the intimidation factor is a part of it. It still surprises me though given that theres money to be made, especially when you consider that Inoue says he's never even been approached about it.

As to what studio, well - who knows. Wit maybe, or Kinema Citrus.

I thought you were talking about making it into an animated series, and there's not much money in that compared to movies.

And I'm not sure how negotiations go, but maybe the fact it's already very popular is a factor in why it's not getting an adaptation? They would have to pay too much for the rights or something.

Hasn't Vagabond been on hiatus since like forever?

I would assume REAL would also be difficult to adapt based on how difficult animating wheelchair basketball would be.

What about Liden Films who did the latest version of Blade of the Immortal?

I think all the credit for the occasional brilliance of that adaptation goes to Hamasaki, who did it working with limited resources. He or Furuhashi would be great choices as director, but I don't think Lidenfilms has the pure firepower to do it justice.

Blade of the immortal and Vagabond, while both looking gorgeous, have very different visuals too. Samura's art is very "stylish", while Inoue's is very realistic looking. I'd say the latter requires a way bigger budget.

Well the thing with Vagabond is that you need a studio who can pull off the gruff "beautifully dirty" look of the art. That's not a style you see often, and I'm not aware of a studio who knows how to do that.

Anyway back OT, I assume SD's movie will be day 1 hit here in my country.

AAAAAAAAAND it's CGI. Dammit Toei.

The movie will be directed & written by Inoue himself??!

Well, that'll be very interesting.