Netflix’s live-action Gundam movie officially wrapped filming. Yet there’s not much anticipation around it. For a franchise that’s used to printing money every year thanks to its toyline, this seems to be the one project that everybody has given up on before a single second of footage has been released.
It’s odd how Netflix hasn’t made a bigger deal of this movie too. Although, considering how bad its marketing is in general, this is par for the course by now. One day it’ll just drop on the platform and everybody will say, “Hey, how did that get here?” Then the people in the boardroom will wonder where it all went wrong while they multitask and plan the next influencer-only event for pseudo-celebrities and their hungry entourages.
Written and directed by Jim Mickle, who handled the fantastic series adaptation of Sweet Tooth for the streaming service, and starring Sydney Sweeney and Noah Centineo, Gundam has the necessary ingredients to attract attention. The biggest concern, though, is the budget for the effects, since this film will need legitimate mecha action. The only positive here is that Netflix isn’t directly involved as a production company – those responsibilities lie with Bandai Namco Filmworks, Nightshade, and Legendary Pictures. If Netflix were putting it together, you just know it would be itching to splurge AI all over this – and honestly, an AI-generated Gundam sounds about as appealing as Elon Musk’s version of The Odyssey and a colonoscopy.
Look, to give credit where credit is due, Netflix knocked One Piece out of the park; it’s the best live-action anime adaptation yet. However, the problem is that it appears to be the outlier rather than the rule, since the streaming service is also responsible for the badly received live-action versions of Death Note and Cowboy Bebop. The hope is that Gundam will be more like One Piece, though fans aren’t so confident judging by their comments on r/movies.
“I originally had hope for this when it was at Legendary under the original director who did the King Kong movie I believe. No longer. Netflix has been pretty awful in general for years now,” a redditor wrote.
“I mean I’m going to watch it but I don’t expect anything good,” another said.
One commentator posed the big question that everybody is secretly wondering but maybe hasn’t said out loud: “Which will be more disappointing, this or the Amazon Voltron movie?”
Whichever way, Mickle told ScreenRant that he’s “excited about Gundam” and hyped up the project. “It’s a very dense world,” he said. “I think what’s cool about this movie would be it’s an entry ramp for a lot of people that don’t know that universe, but I think fans are going to dig it.”
Yeah, this remains to be seen. If anything, 2026’s Masters of the Universe showed us that properties that delighted previous generations aren’t guaranteed to have as big of an audience today, no matter how good they are. Unlike He-Man, though, Gundam never went away, so it has that in its favor. Time will tell.
Gundam |
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Plot unknown. Feature film based on the Japanese giant robot franchise Gundam. |
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| Studio: Netflix, Legendary Pictures, Bandai Namco Filmworks, Nightshade |
| Running Time: N/A |
| Release Date: N/A (2027 window) |
| Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Noah Centineo, Michael Mando, Shioli Kutsuna, Gemma Chua-Tran, Nonso Anozie, Javon Walton, Oleksandr Rudynskyi, Jason Isaacs |
| Director: Jim Mickle |
| Writers: Jim Mickle |
| Genre: Sci-fi, Action, Space Opera |
| Box Office: N/A |
