Unmade Film
Intended Release: 2015

Attack on Titan (Machiyama Proposal)

進撃の巨人
[Shingeki no Kyojin]

When man-eating humanoids known as Titans invade, all hopes are placed on humanity’s strongest soldier, Captain Levi, to stop the impending threat.

LOST PROJECT HISTORY

Handpicked by director Shinji Higuchi and Attack on Titan creator Hajime Isayama, film critic Tomohiro Machiyama was tasked with writing the script for the live-action adaptation with Yusuke Watanabe. Machiyama expressed interest in making the film’s central character Captain Levi, due to Levi being the most popular character with fans of the series, and his vision for the movie was to be more in line with the source material.

At the behest of Isayama, and because of the primarily Japanese cast, the setting was altered to Japan and several characters were dropped in the process. The notion of Levi being the protagonist was scrapped, and the character was excluded from future iterations of the script altogether.

Monsters

Background and Trivia

• In an interview with screenwriter Tomohiro Machiyama on the TBS radio show Tamamusubi, Machiyama expressed interest in making the film’s central character Captain Levi due to his immense popularity. However, when the decision came to set the film adaptation in Japan, the Levi character was scrapped, as there is no proper “v” sound in Japanese. Other character names that would have caused issues being converted into Japanese included Bertholt, Reiner, Hannes, Franz, Hanna, and Erwin.

Concept Evolution