It’s not particularly notable that Warner Bros. is developing a live-action adaptation of Hirohiko Araki’s popular manga series, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (Jojo No Kimyo Na Boken). Most of the films the studio is putting out in the next half-decade are based on comic books. No, what’s interesting is that they’re actually allowing a real life Asian actor to take the lead role, instead of a regular ol’ white actor like Matt Damon or Jim Sturgess. The protagonist, Josuke Higashikata, will be played by 22-year-old Tokyo-born Kento Yamazaki.
Part of the reason that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure—about a clan of good guys with superpowers who fight bad guys with superpowers—isn’t being Last Airbender-ed is that Warner Bros. is co-producing the action-fantasy film with Toho, the Japanese studio behind 28 Godzilla movies. Another is that it’s being directed by Takashi Miike, the Japanese filmmaker who has cranked out more than 90 filmed productions in the past 25 years. (You probably haven’t seen all of them, because nobody has, but manga adaption Ichi The Killer and upsetting horror slog Audition might ring a bell.) And then, of course, there’s the fact that you can’t get away with that shit anymore.
This will be reworked from the fourth part of the manga series, Diamond Is Unbreakable, which was recently adapted by David Production for television as an animated series. The live-action film is scheduled to hit theaters in the summer of 2017.