The live-action Gundam film has been in the works in some form or another since 2018. A director and cast have been announced, including high-profile names like Sydney Sweeney joining the project. Still, hard details on exactly what Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the legendary mech anime series will look like have been almost non-existent.
Now one of the movie’s stars is pulling back the curtain ever so slightly.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this summer, Gundam and Street Fighter star Noah Centineo revealed the movie is a “big action romance space movie.” Centineo continued by describing Gundam as, “a non-Shakespearean Romeo and Juliet in space.” That is a bit of a confusing statement, but what I think Centineo means is that the film is about star-crossed lovers on the opposite sides of a generational conflict. That sounds like it could fit perfectly within established Mobile Suit Gundam lore, as the series often focuses on the war between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon in the Universal Century timeline.
An early official synopsis of the film reads:
As shifting allegiances and a growing threat set them on a collision course for one another, they’re pulled into a high-stakes race across the stars that could define the fate of humanity. With awe-inspiring battles, intimate human emotion, and an epic cinematic scale, this is Gundam like it’s been seen before.
Centineo confirmed to Horowitz that the Gundam film will take place in the Universal Century. This timeline is where a number of the most iconic shows and movies in the Gundam franchise have occurred, including the original series that started it all. While we don’t know exactly when in the timeline the live-action film will take place, concept art released in 2021 showed the iconic RX-78-2 Gundam suit from the original series. That concept art, however, was shown while Jordan Vogt-Roberts was attached as director. Vogt-Roberts was later replaced with Jim Mickle.
Noah Centineo and Sydney Sweeney won’t be the only familiar faces in the movie. They’ll be joined by the likes of Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery) and Michael Mando (Spider-Man: Brand New Day), as well as Jackson White (Tell Me Lies), Shioli Kutsuna (Deadpool & Wolverine), Nonso Anozie (Sweet Tooth), Javon “Wanna” Walton (Under the Bridge), Oleksandr Rudynskyi (The Agency), Ida Brooke (Dune: Part Three), and Gemma Chua-Tran (Heartbreak High).
Netflix has not set a release date for the movie, but filming wrapped in July. Gundam fans have a lot to look forward to right now. In addition to the live-action movie, a new animated series, Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO, is set to be released in 2027. A game set in the same universe as the show, Gundam Rogue Orbit, will also be released next year.