The Kubrick and Tezuka Connection

[EyeOdyssey]

While looking at the Wikipedia article of Osamu Tezuka I found this

"In January 1965, Tezuka received a letter from Stanley Kubrick, who had watched Astro Boy and wanted to invite Tezuka to be the art director of his next movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Tezuka could not afford to leave his studio for an entire year to live in England, so he refused the invitation. Although he could not work on it, he loved the film..."

I wonder, if Kubrick was aware of Astro Boy, is it possible that AI (his last film concept that he was never able to finish) possibly had inspiration from the show?

And yes, I am a Kubrick fan.

[Earthshine]

I think I remember seeing this story somewhere else, and that Tezuka played the soundtrack to the movie often during late-nights when he was drawing.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

You know, I can just picture the shuttle from the space station to the moon with Dr. Floyd sleeping through the in flight video entertainment, some classic Anime's from the 60's with Astro and Kimba!

[Tetsuwan Atom]

I think Astro Boy was the only thing he was actually aware of because he saw it on tv or something though tezuka was just getting into making more mature great sci-fi works so if he would actually have known those he would have wanted to hire him even more.

Though it was never meant to be anyway, any comic animation artist in the West would gladly drop his work to be in a major live action movie but we all know in the east it has become a little diffrent because of him.