New Netflix anime movie Ultraman: Rising comes from a nearly 25-year-old idea from its director: “I never thought there would be any way I could get the rights to the characters”

Ultraman may be unfamiliar to some but, to many in Japan, the alien superhero – first introduced in 1966’s Ultra Q – is an icon.

That decades-long history has spawned countless TV shows, movies, and video games. It even inspired director Shannon Tindle to come up with his own original idea, one that would become the basis for a new Netflix movie almost a quarter of a century later.