The ‘One-Punch Man’ Movie Truly Could Not Have Found a Better Writer

It’s been a standout week for Hollywood actually making good decisions for their live-action adaptations of nerdy fare.

First, we learned that—incredibly, amazingly, beautifully—Keanu Reeves will be voicing Shadow in the next Sonic The Hedgehog movie. And buried at the very end of a Hollywood Reporter piece about the next moves of director Justin Lin, we got some surprising news about who’s writing the upcoming One Punch Man live-action adaptation film.

We’ve known for a while that Lin, who’s most well-known for directing four entries of the Fast & Furious series, was on board to direct Sony’s adaption. Hell, we learned Lin was on board shortly after he announced he was leaving Fast X (and we sure missed him). Considering Lin is basically the best in Hollywood for crafting absurd action sequences, this was incredible news. But what we learned this week is that Dan Harmon and Heather Anne Campbell, two writers for Adult Swim’s totemic series Rick and Morty, are writing the film. The internet proceeded to lose their minds in glee.

Harmon and especially Campbell are about the best picks for the job you can find. Harmon is most well-known for co-creating Rick and Morty and for creating the cult-classic NBC sitcom Community. Campbell has been a writer on Rick and Morty for several seasons, and her most celebrated contribution to the show so far is the instantly-famous and extremely unhinged “spaghetti episode.”

Campbell also co-hosts a video game podcast called Get Played!, which has a Patreon-subscriber sister podcast called Get Animed! If you regularly listen to both shows (like me), you very quickly get a sense of how much anime means to Campbell. She has a deep, genuine love for it, and has talked on the show about growing up as an anime fan during a period where it felt like a social taboo to say you even liked anime. Heather Anne Campbell is without a doubt the best person Sony could’ve possibly hired to write a One Punch Man adaptation.

Back when the movie was announced in 2020, Scott Rosenburg (Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle) and Jeff Pinker (Venom) were also announced as the film’s writers. Clearly, the film has had a long, tricky production period. The shift from Rosenburg and Pinker to Harmon and Campbell seems to signify that the production team as a whole is realizing that One Punch Man is at its strongest when it emphasizes its comedy, not when it plays itself purely as an action series.

No release date for the film has been projected, but it will probably be a while off. In the meantime, season three of the anime is coming sometime soon.

(Image credit: Madhouse)