Cyborg 009 (Western-animated film)

Cyborg 009 was a planned Western-animated film adaptation of the Cyborg 009 series, to be produced by Comic Book Movies^[1]. Peter Chung (of Aeon Flux fame) was in charge of the story and character designs, and pre-production work had begun in 2008.

However, this feature quietly went into development hell and was cancelled. Before this project, Comic Book Movies had attempted to get their live-action Cyborg 009 film plan into production, only for it to also fall through.

History[]

In a July 2008 interview with Animation World Magazine^[2], Chung revealed that in addition to attempting to get a new adaptation of Aeon Flux off ground, he was working on a new Cyborg 009 movie:

"One of the things that I'm working on now is an adaptation of Cyborg 009, which is a Japanese comic book character and an animation series from the '60s, which I grew up with. Japanese animation is very popular all over the world, so a lot of it is being adapted into animated features."

Little to no details are known about the film's actual plot, though he would later display character designs that he had done while it was in development. These were revealed at a Spring 2013 animation seminar ^[3].

Concept Art[]

Besides the updated uniforms more reminiscent of American superhero comics, which would be reflected in the Archaia graphic novel, this concept art shows 002 and 003 to have their hair colors switched, a change that was used in both that graphic novel and 009 Re:Cyborg.

Chung did designs of both the cyborgs in their better-known red color scheme, as well as concepts featuring updated versions of the original green uniforms; there is a possibility of the uniforms having a color-shifting effect like the later Archaia version for camouflage, or for marking their defection from Black Ghost. Dr. Gilmore and Skull (labeled as "Black Ghost") are also known to have had their designs drawn up. The character vectors were later released in their isolated forms on his Instagram in 2022.