Film to premiere September 7 in Japan

Japanese film news website Cinema Today began streaming a short battle scene from the upcoming computer-graphics film Space Pirate Captain Harlock. The clip features the title character fighting while inside a battleship.

The film remakes the classic anime Space Pirate Captain Harlock with Toei Animation's highest production budget ever at the equivalent of more than 30 million U.S. dollars. Shun Oguri and Haruma Miura star as the title pirate and the new character Yama, respectively.

In Leiji Matsumoto's original 1977-79 manga, the title character rebels against Earth's inept government and fights for humanity with his crew of 40 aboard the invincible space battleship Arcadia. The manga inspired a 1978-1979 television anime series, a few features, and the sequel Arcadia of My Youth: Endless Orbit SSX.

Writer Harutoshi Fukui (Mobile Suit Gundam UC novels, live-action Bōkoku no Aegis ) reconstructed the story to reflect the themes of modern society, and Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) is directing with the latest filmmaking technology in the style of a Hollywood production.

In addition to Oguri and Miura, the film stars Yuu Aoi, Arata Furuta, Ayano Fukuda, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Maaya Sakamoto, Miyuki Sawashiro, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, and Chikao Ohtsuka as crew members aboard the Arcadia .

The film will open in Japan on September 7, and the London-based film sales company GFM Films has listed that it is working on an international dub. The Hawaiian International Film Festival will screen the film at its October 10-20 event.