The Glorious Team Batista to get sequel

by Chris MaGee

It looks like Yoshihiro Nakamura's "The Glorious Team Batista" (or "The Glory of Team Batista" depending on which website you read) will be getting a sequel. The medical mystery/ drama about the investigation of a team of brilliant surgeons who have devised an alternative to heart transplant after a series of mysterious deaths of their patients was based on a novel by author Takeru Kaido. Now TBS, the folks who produced the film, and director Nakamura will be returning to adapt another Kaido novel, titled "General Rouge no Gaisen," to the screen. Also returning will be the two main stars of the first film, Yuko Takeuchi as Dr. Kohei Taguchi and Hiroshi Abe as Keisuke Shiratori, a medical investigator with the Ministry of Health and Labour. This time out the two will be putting their heads together to solve the problems of emergency medical treatment. I wonder when they're done if they can fly over here to Ontario to fix our broken emergency health care system?

A sequel for "Team Batista" is a bit of a no brainer. It brought in ¥1.6 billion during its theatrical release at the beginning of this year and it has already been turned into a successful television series starring Atsushi Ito.

"General Rouge no Gaisen" started shooting on November 19th and is set for a Japanese theatrical release in March of 2009. Thanks to Tokyograph for the details on this.