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WETA Workshop: Richard Taylor talks about Evangelion movie

October 14, 2005 on 11:32 pm | In Anime News | 4 Comments

Richard Taylor, co-owner of the WETA Workshop, announced tonight at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo that pre-production has resumed on the Evangelion film.

In May 2003 John Ledford, CEO of ADV Films, approached WETA and asked them to start development work for a Neon Genesis Evangelion film. Taylor was glad to accept, and work progressed for six months.
At that time, in Taylor’s words, the project “fell off the face of the planet”. With no word of production, WETA was forced to cease work.

About four months ago, at ComicCon in San Diego, the producer who had been working on the Evangelion film was flagged down by Taylor at the WETA booth. They went out to drink. Someone at the bar recognised Taylor, and posed the question “What’s happening with the Evangelion movie?”
Taylor agreed, and asked the producer the same question; for every one Lord of the Rings or Kong email WETA receives, they receive 25 about Evangelion.

A short while later, Taylor and Ledford made their way to Tokyo, to visit Studio GAINAX. Taylor said that GAINAX is known for being fiercely protective of their properties, and they were somewhat nervous. The work that had been done on Lord of the Rings and the “filmic phenomena” that ensued counted in their favour, and Taylor had prepared a six minute example of the design work that they had done for the film. As it turns out, WETA had continued to work on Evangelion “in their spare time”.

GAINAX were quite impressed with the pitch that had been made, and thusly Evangelion was put back on track. Taylor added to the story that on his way out of GAINAX, he saw Anno Hideaki, Evangelion’s director, eating his lunch and watching dailies.
They got to talking, and it turned out that they have a shared passion: steam trains. This sense of camaraderie bodes well for the project; short of The Hobbit, tangled in its legal rights, Taylor says that this is the project that he is most excited to work on.

Ledford and Taylor spent the remainder of their trip pitching to financiers. Matt Greenfield, co-founder of ADV Films, is presently in Oceania on holiday and reportedly to meet with WETA.

Taylor says that WETA’s full scale role in Evangelion production should follow soon after work on Halo is complete.