Warner Home Video has acquired the worldwide (excluding Japan) home video and television rights to the new CG sci-fi anime feature Appleseed: Ex Machina. Produced by action auteur John Woo (Mission: Impossible II, Face/Off) and directed by Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed, Bubblegum Crisis), the film is slated for a 2008 release in both HD and standard DVD formats. A two-disc collectors set containing extra bonus materials will also hit retail at the same time.

Appleseed was a critical and box-office success in Japan before Geneon Ent. brought it to select theaters and home video in the U.S. in 2005. Now in the late stages of production at Japanese content creator Micott & Basara Inc., Appleseed: Ex Machina is more of a reboot than a direct sequel to the 2004 film. The pic will sport a very different, more refined look with Tokyo-based Digital Frontier producing in native HD using a mix of motion-capture techniques and keyframed 3D CG.

Working with long-time producing partner Terence Chang, Woo serves as creative producer on the second film through his Lion Rock Prods. ‘A couple of years ago I attended a screening [of Appleseed] and I was really amazed,’ Woo recalls. ‘I could see that Aramaki was a very talented director. I was glad to become involved with Ex Machina; I really wanted to learn about this new style of animation.’

‘John’s input was remarkable,’ adds Aramaki. ‘Our working sessions were more productive than I could have ever anticipated. I like to think we have opened new doors together.’

The film series is based on the manga by Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and is set in the year 2131, after most of the world has been devastated by war. The saga chronicles the battle between mankind and bioroids, a race of cybernetic pseudo-clones that were designed to aid humans in domestic capacities.

Appleseed: Ex Machina revolves around Deunan, a young female warrior, and Briareos, a veteran cyborg-soldier, who are members of ESWAT, an elite special forces team that is deployed wherever trouble strikes. They find their professional partnership and love affair tested with the arrival of ESWAT’s newest member, Tereus, an experimental Bioroid created from Briareos’ DNA. At the same time, the city of Olympus finds itself violently attacked by a mysterious force intent on imposing its own version of ‘world peace.’