Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it looks as though the production of the Live Action Dragonball movie is well underway. It’s been awhile since we’ve heard any news regarding the movie, other than the actual actors casted for each role. Recently, Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Japan published the first image of Justin Chatwin as Son Goku in Jame Wong’s live adaptation of Akira Toriyama’s classic anime/manga series. Here is a picture from the magazine:

As well, posters advertising the movie have also been seen at theatres recently.

It has also been confirmed that the movie will premiere in Japan in March 2009 and then eventually be released in North America on April 3rd, 2009. Again, the prospect of seeing a live-action Dragonball movie does sound appealing, but at the same time, I hope that the director and writers don’t make it look “cheesy”, since cartoon-based, live-action films are usually hard to execute…but if they can duplicate the success of Transformers, it’ll be a successful project.

-Stephen