Oshii to Direct The Sky Crawlers

Production I.G has announced that Mamoru Oshii, best known internationally for the two Ghost in the Shell movies, will direct The Sky Crawlers, an animated feature scheduled for Japanese release in 2008.

The Sky Crawlers is based on series of novels by Hiroshi Mori concerning an alternate present day where young “Kildren” fight a war as entertainment for adults. After reading the novel, Director Oshii praised it as “a work that should be made into a movie for young people now….It is time to face this new perception to our existence through the Kildren, who live indefinitely in eternal adolescence, and this theme should be dealt with now.”

Oshii’s previous project was Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters, a mockumentary looking at the history of dine-and-dash con artists since World War II. Tachigui was filmed through the “Superlivemation” process of animating photographs.