New Line Cinema has hired "San Andreas" writers Andre Fabrizio and Jeremy Passmore for a live-action "Astro Boy" film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Animal Logic Entertainment, Ranger 7 Films and Tezuka Productions will produce the feature, based on the beloved boy robot created by manga and anime legend Osamu Tezuka.

The website contends the project is intended to shed some of "Astro Boy's" "child-skewing trappings and be a live-action, four-quadrant adventure movie."

Animal Logic and Tezuka Productions announced a year ago that they intended to develop an Astro Boy movie, saying, "We actually see him in the same league as Iron Man."

Introduced in a manga series published from 1952 to 1968, Astro Boy is a powerful robot created by the head of the Ministry of Science, Dr. Tenma (aka Dr. Astor Boyton II), to replace his dead son. The scientist soon rejects Astro Boy, who eventually ends up in the care of the kind, new head of the Ministry of Science, where he fights evil and injustice.

Astro Boy has been adapted several times for television, most famously in 1963, and most recently for the big screen in 2009 in a CG-animated film that grossed just $44 million worldwide.