During my daily surfing I discovered this tantalizing bit of news at Varitey Asia Online. The article outlines how production companies Sedic International and Celluloid Dreams have teamed up and will be co-producing “projects with an international potential”, but one of these projects immediately caught my attention: “The Last Zatoichi”!
You heard that right… The newly created production company has slated this for a 2010 release and tagged Junji Sakamoto to direct what is being billed as the very last Zatoichi film. Sakamoto is probably best known here in North America as the director of the quirky drama “Kao (Face)” for which he won Best Director at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, but Sakamoto isn’t any stranger to action. Over his almost 20 year career he’s repeatedly returned to the fertile ground of boxing for films like “Tekken”, “Boxer Joe” and his debut film “Knockout” that the International Herald tribune called “one of the best boxing films of the decade”; and his latest film “Chameleon” starring Tatsuya Fujiwara is a revenge thriller.
There was no indication as to who would star as the titular blind swordsman in the article except that the film would have “an all-star Japanese cast” and that pre-production work, including the building of an entire Edo era town (!) has been going on for two years. With that kind of major construction I thought it would be easy to find additional details, but search as I might online I still came up empty-handed.
The Zatoichi series of 26 films stretched over 27 years from 1962 to 1989 when original star Shintaro Katsu died of pharyngeal cancer. The blind swordsman was brought back to the screen in 2003 by Takeshi Kitano in the wildly popular “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi” and later this year audiences will get to see a different take on the franchise when “Ichi” directed by Fumihiko Sori will unleash a female version of the action hero played by Haruka Ayase.
So will this be a continuation of the Kitano reboot, the gender-bending Ayase vehicle, or will we see another star step into Zatoichi’s geta for his final film appearance? Keep checking back because you know I’ll be keeping my eye open for more details.
You heard that right… The newly created production company has slated this for a 2010 release and tagged Junji Sakamoto to direct what is being billed as the very last Zatoichi film. Sakamoto is probably best known here in North America as the director of the quirky drama “Kao (Face)” for which he won Best Director at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, but Sakamoto isn’t any stranger to action. Over his almost 20 year career he’s repeatedly returned to the fertile ground of boxing for films like “Tekken”, “Boxer Joe” and his debut film “Knockout” that the International Herald tribune called “one of the best boxing films of the decade”; and his latest film “Chameleon” starring Tatsuya Fujiwara is a revenge thriller.
There was no indication as to who would star as the titular blind swordsman in the article except that the film would have “an all-star Japanese cast” and that pre-production work, including the building of an entire Edo era town (!) has been going on for two years. With that kind of major construction I thought it would be easy to find additional details, but search as I might online I still came up empty-handed.
The Zatoichi series of 26 films stretched over 27 years from 1962 to 1989 when original star Shintaro Katsu died of pharyngeal cancer. The blind swordsman was brought back to the screen in 2003 by Takeshi Kitano in the wildly popular “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi” and later this year audiences will get to see a different take on the franchise when “Ichi” directed by Fumihiko Sori will unleash a female version of the action hero played by Haruka Ayase.
So will this be a continuation of the Kitano reboot, the gender-bending Ayase vehicle, or will we see another star step into Zatoichi’s geta for his final film appearance? Keep checking back because you know I’ll be keeping my eye open for more details.
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