Rooster Teeth co-founder wants to make live-action RWBY movie

Plus, an update for the next season of Red vs Blue!

In a recent Entertainment Weekly article, Rooster Teeth co-founder Burnie Burns has openly expressed interest in making a live-action film version of RWBY. The Texas-based production company’s hit “Americanime” show about super-powered Huntsman & Huntresses battling monsters in the future-fantasy world of Remnant from the late great Monty Oum.

“I really think RWBY is something that could be a live-action movie some day,” Burns said last Friday, while visiting New York.

“We have to go through all the comic book movies, and then we have to go through the video game phase, which I really believe is next — all the video game franchises will be like Marvel movies are now. We’ll see how long that lasts and we’ll see if there’s room for something like RWBY in there. I would like to see that.”

Burns has admitted that a RWBY movie is unlikely to be the next stage in further development for the franchise.

“Right now, we’re looking at other properties based on RWBY,” he said. “We have got the video game, we have RWBY Chibi (a series of comedic shorts within the RWBY Universe).

I think there’s the opportunity for a spin-off show. There are so many characters. The audience for that is just going nuts. We keep reevaluating the upper limits of what that franchise can do all the time. At this point, we’re just pulling out all the stops and moving ahead with it as fast as we can.”

Rooster Teeth’s SVOD platform FIRST recently announced its 2017 animation slate, which includes both the 5th volume of RWBY (set to premiere this fall), and season 15 of another popular show, Red vs. Blue (debuting in April). “We’re super-excited about RvB 15,” Burns said. “We have a new writer-director, he’s a really talented guy.”

Aside from doing a voice in RWBY himself as Ruby & Yang’s father Taiyang Xiao Long, much of Burns’ energy over the next few months will be taken up by Lazer Team 2, the sequel to Rooster Teeth’s 2015 live-action science fiction-comedy, which he both co-wrote co-starred.

“We’re very very focused on the comedy, the second time around,” said Burns. “We’ve already established the sci-fi world. We don’t have that obligation to build that world out as much — we can tell a really funny story within that world. We’re in preproduction, and we’re going to start shooting in late March. So, I have to figure out a way to fit into a spandex suit, sometime in the next two months.”

RWBY Vol.4’s season finale premieres this Saturday, February 4th at 10:00AM eastern time.