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Several Japanese media outlet is reporting that Hiroya Oku's bestselling sci-fi action manga Gantz is getting adapted into a two-part live action films. Helming the project is director Shinsuke Sato (The Princess Blade, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror) and the main lead roles goes to Kazunari Ninomiya (Tekkon Kinkreet, Letters from Iwo Jima) of the Arashi musical group and Ken'ichi Matsuyama (Death Note, Detroit Metal City, The Legend of Kamui). The CG effects will be provided by Digital Frontier, the same company that worked on the Death Note live action films.
Principal photography is set to begin in November and is slated to end next April. The first part will tentatively open in the winter of 2011 while the second part will follow in the spring.
The story follows a young Tokyo college student who is reanimated after a deadly subway accident. Kei Kurono (Ninomiya) and his friend Masaru Kato (Matsuyama) go on violent, seemingly endless missions at the behest of an unseen host.
Principal photography is set to begin in November and is slated to end next April. The first part will tentatively open in the winter of 2011 while the second part will follow in the spring.
Yep, I sent this in yesterday, but oh well...
Gantz is one of those mangas that continues to deliver, with the plot going places you really don't see coming. Characters die left and right, with pretty much anyone being fair game. I'm curious to see how they handle the extreme violence, and the fact that the series is nowhere near reaching its conclusion. The anime was good (yet sometimes slow, and not without its share of filler episodes) up until the end, where it failed miserably to bring the series to a close. I hope the two movies can handle the material a little better, and given the talent involved, I have hope.
While I am a fan of the manga series I have serious reservations about putting this series in live-action format. It will have to be a fast-pased action film full of cg for this to work. Think Transformers. Hopefully doesn't end up as G.I. Joe. And I do not have high hopes that they will cast Reika or Kei correctly, instead of taking the easy way out of casting whatever petanko idol is popular at the moment.
I have my doubts about this working on live-action. It would be either too cartoonish or just too silly.
I haven't read the manga but did see the anime series. Most of the manga's fans were dissatisfied with Kei's character development, and felt it was rushed (didn't feel like that to me but then again, I didn't read the manga).
Trying to do this development in less than half of the time taken by the anime series will be quite a challenge.
But I definitely think a "Gantz" movie is possible if the focus is right. The series has a very intriguing concept, but executions so far have been very exploitative towards violence and sex angle in the setup, gloating at each dark excess the inventors could come up with. Sometimes sickeningly so. Yet I always felt compelled to keep watching, to know how it ends.
Speaking of endings: after a long pause, the manga has restarted again in Japan, and the current series is confirmed as being the final storyline which will wrap up "Gantz" as a whole.
So the end is in fact in sight...
Agent, the casting has already been announced for Kei (Kazunari Ninomiya, a legitimate actor who was one of the leads in Letters From Iwo Jima) and Kato (Ken'ichi Matsuyama, who did a great job as L in Death Note). I'm not sure Matsuyama is exactly the best match, but he's a good actor. As for Reika, you're right, I have a hard time imagining them casting her correctly. And good luck finding a young Japanese star with her...assets. They might have to dig into the AV industry for that. Granted, her character was used half the time simply for fan service anyway.