On the heels of Star Wars‘ immense popularity and a reignited love for the sci-fi genre, “Star Blazers” debuted as an American cartoon in 1978. The show itself was an adaptation of a Japanese cartoon, “Space Battleship Yamato” that first aired in 1974. The American version re-dubbed and re-edited portions of the series, which told the story of a starship racing to find a device to cleanse the Earth of radiation forced on it by alien invaders.
McQuarrie, best known as the writer of The Usual Suspects and Valkyrie, also wrote and directed 2000’s The Way of the Gun and will provide the screenplay for the upcoming X-Men quasi-sequel, The Wolverine.
A live action version of “Space Battleship Yamato” was released late last year in Japan and met with both financial and critical success.
