Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Shinji Hiramatsu's manga "Black Angels" goes from the page straight to DVD

by Chris MaGee

Guess what? They're turning a manga into a live-action film! Again! Now that we've all recovered from the shock we can give you details of the latest manga to screen adaptation as reported by the folks at Tokyograph. Geneon Universal Entertainment is currently turning Shinji Hiramatsu's action manga "Black Angels" into a live-action straight-to-DVD film.

Hiramatsu's original manga ran from 1981 to 1985 in Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine and followed the adventures of a team of black-clad assassins fighting a covert war against a network of globetrotting bad guys. This new adaptation will star 20-year-old actor Motoki Ochiai, previosuly featured in such films as "Gokusen: The Movie" and "The Hero Show", and 18-year-old pop idol and °C-ute member Maimi Yajima as lead "Black Angels" agents. No director was reported as being attached to this project, which we can assume means that they either don't want to be named or that Geneon has sim ply hired a contract journeyman director for the job.

Expect to see "Black Angels" on Japanese DVD in May of 2011. Thanks to Oricon for the above right promo image.

1 comment:

Oleander said...

According to a press note, the director is Eiji Uchida.