Takashi Miike to Adapt ‘Blade of the Immortal’

October 5, 2015

The director of “Audition” is set to bring Hiroaki Samura’s long-running manga about a cursed ronin to the big screen in 2017.

Japanese director Takashi Miike, known for such films as “Audition” and “Ichi the Killer,” is set to adapt Hiroaki Samura’s long-running manga “Blade of the Immortal.”

Published from 1993 to 2012, the supernatural manga follows the cursed samurai Manji, who must kill 1,000 evil men in order to regain his mortality. The story was adapted in 2008 as television anime series.

Popular Japanese singer and actor Takuya Kimura, nicknamed Kimutaku, will star as Manji in the live-action film, set for release in 2017. A member of the Japanese idol group SMAP, the 42-year-old Kimura appeared in 2010’s “Space Battleship Yamato,” and voiced Howl in “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

(Comic Natalie, via Crunchyroll)