Robotech the movie hit the big screen in 1986. The film used megazone ova with robotech tv show footage to make a new story. The film got a pg rating and went up against transformers the movie and gobots: battle of the rock lords. It was never released on vhs in america, but got a uk video release. From Wikipedia--- Robotech: The Movie (also called Robotech: The Untold Story) was the first new Robotech adventure created by Harmony Gold USA after the 1985 premiere of the original television series. The 1986 theatrical film used footage from the Megazone 23 Part I OVA (original video animation, or made-for-video animated feature) spliced with The Southern Cross, and had only a tenuous link to the television series. According to interviews with director/producer Carl Macek, it had originally been intended to be more of a straight dub of Megazone 23 with dialogue and music changes to reflect the Robotech universe. As originally conceived, it was set during the return of the SDF-1 from Pluto with the protagonist Mark Landry, a relative of Rick Hunter, finding out about the government's coverup of the SDF-1's fate, and Landry fighting to make the information known. However, at the time, Tatsunoko Productions was involved in promoting their own Macross movie, Do You Remember Love, and insisted that Macek not use elements of the Macross story, so as to avoid possible confusion. Also, distributor Cannon Films felt there were "too many girls and not enough robots and guns," and didn't like Megazone's downer ending, either. Thus, Macek rewrote the story to take place shortly before the Second Robotech War, cut segments of Southern Cross footage into it, and commissioned animation studio The Idol Co. to animate a new ending (which was later included on the laserdisc of Megazone 23, Part II). The new version involved the Robotech Masters kidnapping and reprogramming veteran officer B.D. Andrews to steal the memory core of the SDF-1. Because Megazone 23 (an OVA) and Southern Cross (a TV series) were shot on different film stock, 35mm and 16mm respectively, the visual inconsistency was very noticeable on the big screen. Academy released a comic adaptation of the movie in 1995 that bore scant resemblance to the actual movie. Additionally, elements from the movie were used in the plot of the Robotech novel The Masters' Gambit. The film was a bomb in america but was a big hit in other foreign territories such as Argentina and china.