First look at the new Voltron

Netflix and DreamWorks Animation (via USA Today) have released the first look at the new Voltron from their upcoming original series, Voltron: Legendary Defender. In addition, new details on the series have been revealed, including the names of the five teens caught in the middle of the intergalactic battle: Keith, Lance, Hunk, Pidge and Shiro.

In the series, the five heroes get their own lion bots and become “the last line of defense for Arus and other planets against an evil alien force led by King Zarkon.”

“We’re trying to keep as much of that classic feel to it as we can, because ultimately we have huge amounts of nostalgia for (the original) show,” says co-executive producer Lauren Montgomery.

The series will aim for a wide age group as its target, but the producers claim they were aiming for a “Game of Thrones feel with some humor.” They go on to say that some encounters will be more dangerous than others.

“You actually feel like, ‘Oh man, is Voltron going to get out of this one?’ ” executive producer Joaquim Dos Santos says. “There are some of those encounters they just manage to survive.”

“Not everything is solved by Voltron alone,” Montgomery adds. “Sometimes they need to beat something just as the lions. Sometimes they just do it as themselves fighting as men.”

The first 13 episodes of Voltron: Legendary Defender will be released later this year on the streaming service with the first footage to make its debut Friday at WonderCon in Anaheim.

The original Voltron series, based on the Japanese anime properties Beast King GoLion and Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV, aired in the United States from 1984 – 1985 and became a pop culture phenomena in its own right. A TV special, Voltron: Fleet of Doom, was released in 1986 with a computer animated series, Voltron: The Third Dimension, following in 1998.”The Third Dimension” was short-lived, lasting just 26 episodes. Another attempt at rebooting the series came with 2011’s Voltron Force on Nickelodeon, which also lasted just 26 episodes.