‘Gannibal’ Disney+ Japanese Horror Series to Return for Second Season

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan‘s Fair Trade Commission on Tuesday approved a remedial proposal by Toho Cinemas, the country’s largest movie theater operator, not to apply unfair pressure on third-party film distributors. The FTC opened an investigation into film booking practices in March of last year, having received reports that Toho Cinemas, which is also in the same family of companies as Japan’s leading distributor, had pressured other companies to only use its theaters. In its decision, reported by Japanese media, the FTC said that it accepted Toho Cinemas’ proposed remedies and said that it would not need to issue a cease-and-desist order or take other punitive measures that the anti-monopoly laws allow. The FTC explained that distributors choose so-called main cinemas as venues for promotional events (stage greetings, fan meetings and gala screenings). It found that since 2016 Toho would not accept film bookings at cinemas in its circuit unless a Toho Cinemas venue had also been designated as a main cinema. At the time of the complaint, the Asahi Shimbun business newspaper mentioned ‘intimidation’ by Toho.

Naman Ramachandran The full company for the second run of “My Neighbor Totoro,” a stage adaptation of Miyazaki Hayao‘s beloved 1988 Studio Ghibli film, has been unveiled. The production is a collaboration between multi-award-winning composer Joe Hisaishi, who executive produces, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), Improbable and Nippon TV. It will reopen at London’s Barbican arts complex this fall.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief TIFFCOM, the rights market that sits alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival, is celebrating its return to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, with a move to another venue and the launch of the new Tokyo Story Market. The three-day market (Oct. 25-27) will relocate from Ikkebukuro to the Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center (aka Hamamatsucho-Kan) in Hamamatsucho district.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Netflix has given a green light to a third season of dystopian Japanese thriller series “Alice in Borderland.” The announcement was made by Netflix VP of APAC content, Kim Minyoung on the second day of the APOS conference in Indonesia. Based on the manga series of the same name by Aso Haro, “Alice in Borderland” follows the story of Arisu after he is transported to a parallel universe in which he has to play and win games to remain alive. The games are divided into four categories represented by suits on a deck of playing cards.

Survivor is back tonight (Wednesday, September 27)!

When the domestic violence allegations against Justin Roiland were made public earlier this year, Adult Swim was quick to announce that he would no longer be involved with the series he co-created, “Rick and Morty.” This was a huge announcement, as Roiland was the man behind the iconic voices of the title characters. What would the series do without Roiland? Well, the quick answer was that “Rick and Morty” was going to move on without Roiland and under the sole guidance of co-creator Dan Harmon.

A few years after Season 1 debuted, we are on the precipice of Season 2 of HBO’s “30 Coins.” Now, if you’re in the U.S., like me, you may be wondering, “What the hell is ‘30 Coins?’” Yeah, well, that’s a good question. All I know is Season 2 brings in Paul Giamatti as a villain looking to end the world, and I’m completely sold.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Studio Ghibli, the iconic Japanese cartoon firm behind Miyazaki Hayao’s recent “The Boy and the Heron” is selling a controlling stake to Japanese broadcaster NTV.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Ozu Yasujiro, the leading Japanese film director behind classics including “Tokyo Story” and “Late Spring,” has had his double birth and death anniversaries – Ozu died in 1963 on the day of his 60th birthday, a little more than a year after the release of his last film “An Autumn Afternoon” – celebrated throughout 2023 at places as varied as the Cannes Film Festival, Los Angeles’ Margaret Herrick Library and the Taiwan Film & Audiovisual Institute. But it falls to October’s Tokyo International Film Festival to put on this year’s biggest and most comprehensive reconstruction of Ozu’s surprisingly varied career. Working in conjunction with the National Film Archive of Japan, the festival will present an extensive retrospective that covers almost all the films that Ozu directed (TIFF/NFAJ Classics: Ozu Yasujiro Week) from Oct. 24-29. Ozu spent his entire career, from camera assistant in 1923 to renown director in 1962, as an employee of major Japanese studio Shochiku, with all the advantages and disadvantages such an arrangement brought. While Ozu is best known for his stripped-down dramas, often centered on family relationships, sometimes troubled or contentious, involving parents and young or grown-up children, many hinging on questions of marriage, generational misunderstandings or the loneliness of the elderly, the director’s register may not entirely have been of his own choosing. “The apparent consistency of the post-war films surely owes as much to this production situation as to Ozu’s aesthetic choices,” wrote critic Tony Rayns in a recent Sight & Sound portrait.

You’ll remember Apple TV+ was so gung-ho on its spy series, “Slow Horses” starring Academy Award winner Gary Oldman, they greenlit it for two seasons and shot them back-to-back and then released them both within the same year (April and December of 2022). Well, they also did the same with the renewal, announcing that seasons three and four of the critically acclaimed espionage drama would be greenlight and shot concurrently.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Japan’s Dean Fujioka (“Fullmetal Alchemist,” “The Man From The Sea”) and the U.K.’s Callum Woodhouse (“All Creatures Great and Small,” “The Durrells”) are set to star in “Orang Ikan,” a WWII-set creature horror film. The picture is scripted by Singapore and Indonesia-based Mike Wiluan (“Buffalo Boys,” HBO series “Grisse”) who will also direct the picture from next month. International rights to “Orang Ikan” have been picked up by London-based SC Films International, which will give the project its sales launch at the Busan festival and accompanying market next month. Set in the Pacific, 1942, a Japanese ship transports prisoners of war to occupied territories as slave labor.

Netflix‘s live-action adaptation of the beloved One Piece anime and manga series has been confirmed to return for a second season.Last night (September 14), series creator Eiichiro Oda announced the news through a special video. In the video, Oda thanked fans for their support and asked viewers if they had enjoyed season 1, which launched in late August.“I spent a long time working on it with Netflix and Tomorrow Studios.

Acclaimed choreographer Sharna Burgess is revisiting her past tensions with “Dancing with the Stars”.

STARZ keeps moving to the beat of its own eccentric drum and, today, has released the trailer for season two of its hit horror comedy, “Shining Vale,” which returns to haunt viewers’ screens on the frightfully appropriate Friday, October 13. READ MORE: Fall Film Preview: 60+ Most Anticipated Movies To Watch “Shining Vale” stars Emmy Award–nominee Courteney Cox (“Friends,” “Cougar Town”), Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner Greg Kinnear (“As Good as It Gets,” “The Kennedys”), and Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino (“Hollywood,” “The Expecting”).

Let’s run this again for the uninitiated: Apple TV+’s acclaimed, hit space drama “For All Mankind” is a historical “what if” about the 1960s space race and spotlights the high-stakes lives of astronauts and their families. The series dramatizes an alternate history depicting “what would have happened if the global space race had never ended” after the Soviet Union succeeded in the first crewed Moon landing ahead of the United States.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Johnny and Associates, the high-profile Japanese talent agency whose deceased founder and long-time president Johnny Kitagawa has been revealed as a serial sexual abuser, will forgo some of its fee income as a step toward victim compensation. The move appears to be an attempt to lessen the company’s toxic brand following the now-confirmed revelations about the late Kitagawa’s predatory behavior.

K.J. Yossman The first season of James Bond reality TV series “007’s Road to a Million” has yet to drop, but casting is already underway for Season 2.

Mike Flanagan is back with his latest Netflix horror series. Sure, his last foray into Netflix horror, “The Midnight Club,” wasn’t the best, but this is still the filmmaker behind “The Haunting of Hill House,” so we’ll cut him some slack.

McKinley Franklin editor It’s time. Netflix has released the first official trailer for Mike Flanagan’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, the horror series follows sibling duo Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell), who are at the front of their Fortunato Pharmaceuticals empire. Together, the Usher’s have established an empire of wealth, privilege and power — but at a cost.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Yakusho Koji, the Japanese star who was named best actor at Cannes this year in Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” is set as the subject of a seven-title showcase at the upcoming Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan. Among the septet are classic erotic film “Lost Paradise” from 1997, this year’s “Perfect Days” and 1996 film “Shall We Dance,” which was later remade in Hollywood. A former civil servant who first ventured into Taiga drama (long-running TV series broadcast by NHK), then played in several films by Kurosawa Akira, Yakusho became a major 1990s star in Asia as a result of “Shall We Dance?,” in which he portrayed a ball room dancer, and “Lost Paradise.” He also starred in Itami Juzo’s “Tampopo.” Directed by Morita Yoshimitsu, “Lost Paradise” is a tale of a man and a woman whose marriages no longer make them happy, but who rediscover desire in each other’s arms. Fatefully, however, their newfound joy means ever greater transgression of Japan’s strict morality laws. At the time of the release of “Lost Paradise,” the producers deliberately darkened the erotic scenes to make them less explicit and to achieve less restrictive release classifications.