Skydance Productions, the company that co-financed True Grit, is in talks to acquire the live-action film rights to the popular 1970s and '80s anime series Star Blazers, Deadline reports. Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, The Wolverine) will be hired to write the screenplay.

A dubbed and partly rewritten adaptation of the Space Battleship Yamato anime franchise, Star Blazers centered on a massive spaceship built from the remains of a World War II battleship to travel to another planet in hopes of securing a device that can save an Earth ravaged by alien invaders. The series aired in North America for three seasons, from May 1979 to December 1984, for a total of 77 episodes.

A live-action remake of Space Battleship Yamato was released in December in Japan, ousting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 from the top spot at the box office. There have been two other attempts to get a live-action Star Blazers off the ground, first by Disney in the mid-1990s and then by Benderspink in 2006.

Skydance is headed by David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison and an acrobatic pilot with a fondness for aviation projects. The company is co-financing several projects at Paramount, including Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol and the Jack Ryan franchise reboot. Skydance is also developing Dark Horse's The Strange Case of Hyde for film.