Just look at the mess that is the Akira movie, which has been in the works at Warner Bros. But this is also part of a larger trend of Hollywood studios buying up anime properties they don't fully understand and spending decades smashing their heads against the wall trying to make sense of them. Part of the problem is that Robotech is a pretty unique franchise in that it was created by slapping three different anime shows together and having American writers create a new plot that, by some miracle, made sense, so it's probably not the easiest storyline to adapt. Over the years, at least four directors (including Aquaman's James Wan) and five writing teams (including Herbie: Fully Loaded's Alfred Gough and Miles Millar) have been attached to the project - more people have worked on this thing than on some actually finished trilogies. Let's put it this way: at one point, this was supposed to be Tobey Maguire and Sony's next big franchise after the original Spider-Man trilogy. If the words ' Robotech adaptation gets a director' give you a sense of nostalgia, that's because the movie has been in the works for about 15 years.
