So geeks, quite a while ago now I wrote an enormous piece about Tezuka’s Astro Boy, his cartoonical history and his place amongst the greats within the birth of Manga.

I know that October 2009 is still a considerable distance for people who have not yet mastered the traversing of parallel universes in order to cheat time, but the trailer recently appeared on astroboy-themovie.com and I am SUPER STOKED!

Watch the teaser trailer here below and check out the phenomenal action that IMAGI have, once again, masterfully employed. And check out the voice talent — Nicolas Cage, Freddie Highmore, Kristen Bell, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, Donald Sutherland, Matt Lucas!!!

IMAGI are the tech gurus behind the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Digitization. Say what you will about the plot, the apparent lack of zaniness we are used to with the TMNT crew, but can you fault the graphics? Exactly. IMAGI are working on some other pretty sweet projects, the one that really has me going — aside from Astro Boy – is Gatchaman.

Kristen Bell (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Heroes) has been cast in Warner Bros. upcoming CG-animated movie adaptation, Astro Boy.

The storyline runs along the same vein as Pinocchio and Edward Scissorhands where a boy is created; in this case the boy is created by a scientist to replace a son that he lost. This doesn’t work out so well and Astroboy goes off on an adventure looking for people to like him. On his journey, he discovers his great powers and becomes a hero that has to return home to save Metro City and re-unite with the scientist that created and rejected him.

Nicolas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Bill Nighy, Nathan Lane, Eugene Levy, and Freddie Highmore are all set to lend their voices to the movie as well.