Warner Bros. Pictures has picked up the feature rights to 1980's anime classic "Robotech," which featured giant robots known as mechas says The Hollywood Reporter.

Actor Tobey Maguire is producing and is eyeing the lead role in what the studio plans on being a tentpole sci-fi franchise.

A sprawling sci-fi epic, "Robotech" takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions.

The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship's energy source known as "protoculture," and the planet's survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.

The original "Robotech" was a re-edited and re-dialogued to combine three Japanese anime series to give the producers enough episodes to air as a daily syndicated series.

Craig Zahler ("The Brigands of Rattleborge") has been tapped to write the screenplay.