If Takashi Yamazaki never made another movie, he’d already be a film legend. After making a name for himself in Japan over the past several decades, he broke out internationally in 2023 with the release of Godzilla Minus One, for which he became the first director since Stanley Kubrick to win an Oscar for visual effects.
That success opened a lot of doors for him. We know he expressed interest in doing something Star Wars-related, and, later this year, we’ll see his follow-up to Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero.
But after that, things get even more exciting. Next up for Yamazaki is his first English-language film, which Sony Pictures is distributing, and it gave CinemaCon 2026 a sneak peek. The film, called Grandgear, is being produced by J.J. Abrams and will hit theaters on February 18, 2028. So it’s almost two years away. However, a brief teaser screened at the event revealed that the movie is about giant freaking robots.
The footage showed a sleek, almost Gundam-type robot in the middle of the street posing and facing off with something. Across from it, there’s another robot, this one still made of metal but with a more alien look. (Its head was shaped like a semi-obscure Star Wars alien called an “Amani.”) The two robots run at each other and crash, with one of them smashing a huge gun out of the hand of the other. The gun flips backward in slow motion, crashing on the street, destroying a car.
And that was it. Is this final footage? Proof of concept? Who is in this movie, and what’s it about? We have zero clue. But the Oscar-winning Takashi Yamazaki writing and directing a giant robot movie for Sony, with J.J. Abrams as a producer, is really all we need to know. Plus that title. “Grandgear.” That’s cool as hell, too.
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