Sabrina the Teenage Wuxia?

Posted by Mack at 8:33pm.

Posted in Film News .

Oh dear lord. TOKYOPOP has signed actress Melissa Joan Hart [Sabrina the Teenage Witch] and screenwriter Dan Gordon [The Hurricane, Wyatt Earp and don’t forget the stellar Surf Ninjas] to take one of their properties Samurai Girl: Real Bout High School to the big screen.

From the article posted on Active Anime it appears that Melissa and her mom, producer Paula Hart, have been searching out manga titles for her to work on for a while now. And when they saw SG:RBHS they thought that the lead female role had the same qualities as Melissa. Does anyone remember her running around with a kitana sword? Does anyone remember her doing anything remotely related to samurai action? Seriously, this ain’t rhetorical. If you know something I don’t I would love to read it. And is anyone familiar enough with the SG:RBHS manga and such to know if this is a good thing. I’ll plead ignorance here but this just doesn’t seem kosher. I can’t see it. Read the article here and let us know what you think.

“Our journey led us to Dan Gordon,” Paula Hart recalled. “Dan took a few weeks reading the material and then delivered a story that had us sitting on the edges of our seats. It is smart, funny and terribly exciting.” Terribly is probably more right than she knows.

Dan Gordon describes the script as “a delicious action/comedy mix of Clueless meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” It’s the story of an ancient Samurai warrior reincarnated as a twenty-something-year-old sushi bar hostess. Ryoko discovers she is mankind’s only hope in destroying a coven of murderous wolverines who are hatched every 5,000 years and-if left unchecked-will destroy all humanity. Oh those pesky wolverines. Always hell bent on destroying humanity.

But I can’t help but be reminded that this smacks of a certain television show that was out recently. Albeit with a different group of baddies to fight. Gosh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. You know the one I’m talking about. Oh, it was on for years. That really smart and funny one. The one with that girl that kicked all sorts of ass around town. Oh what was name of it? That’s right! Buffy!

It’s going to happen. It’s going to be compared to that and it is very likely going to fail. Buffy devotees may turn the tide of opinion against this film if it’s not up to snuff. And you thought the wolverines were going to be trouble?

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Reader Comments

tracy 10/04/2004 @ 9:11pm

Way to RUIN my night!
Ron Morin 03/22/2005 @ 4:29am

Melissa Joan Hart is the most wise, beautiful, tolerant, patient, beautiful angel of an actress that I know of. I loved her in Clarissa knows all and I’ve continued to love her right through the Sabrina the Teenage Witch Series. She always showed poise and wisdom in all her trials and tribulations in those shows while always trying to be everybody else’s psychiatrist. If only they would F*cking listen to her then their problems would be solved.

I don’t know how she does it in this day and age of loose morals, yet she always has. I look forward to meeting her someday. As for her doing Samurai type anime, don’t judge a book by it’s cover!
bob 04/09/2005 @ 12:16pm

[Flame removed. Play nice.] Another white person destroying Anime as usual. Way to go gaijins! Since where honky white girls demure asian schoolgirls with samurai swords??
bob again 04/09/2005 @ 12:25pm

oops, major typo.. meant to say

Since when did these honky white girls get casted as cute demure asian schoolgirls with samurai swords?? does hollywood prefer their samurais white? I mean what next?? Are they going to cast Gokou with Tom Cruise, and Vegeta and Gary Busey?