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If you’ve been following this site for the last few years, you’ll notice the gargantuan fuss I’ve been making about Japanese stunt professional-turned-director Kensuke Sonomura, whose well-earned ceremony with his hit directorial debut Hydra, starring actor Masanori Mimoto, continues to this day.
Thankfully, there’s more to report as film production in Japan gracefully ramped up a little more in the past year, and so the aforementioned duo have certainly been keeping busy. This especially goes for the latest reports out of the region on Sonomura’s sophomore feature, Bad City, which kicked off production in November and was officially announced to the press just several days ago in Nakama City, Fukuoka Prefecture.
The film’s release in 2022 is set to mark the 60th birthday celebration for V-Cinema legend Hitoshi Ozawa, whose career of thirty four years includes credits films like Beat Takeshi’s Boiling Point, Takashi Miike’s Dead Or Alive, Hajime Gonno’s Yakuza Kindergarten, Tsutomu Kashima’s 25 Nijyu-Go, and Shigeaki Kubo’s HiGH&LOW: The Worst to name a few.
Ozawa also worked on the script and is executive producing the film, while par for the course is Sonomura who is behind the wheel of the film’s action sequences. I spoke to Sonomura this week and he confirmed that other cast members will be announced soon, which is hugely exciting because of the talent he’s worked with in the past.
Sonomura is a longstanding cohort of stunt professional Yuji Shimomura (Re:Born) out of their U’den Flame Works banner, and has been on a roll with a career in mostly stunts since 2004, with series credits like HiGH&LOW: The Story Of Sword and Netflix series Nowhere Man, and films such as Tatsuya Mariko’s Destruction Babies, Takanori Tsujimoto’s Resident Evil: Vendetta, John Woo’s Manhunt and Hugo Sakamoto’s most recent Fantastic Fest 2021 premiere, Baby Assassins, as well as the latest production of Tak Sakaguchi’s new starrer, 1%er, from director Yudai Yamaguchi.
Imaginably, there’s reason to get excited from this point on. If you’ve watched Hydra (which is available from Well Go USA in the U.S.) and enjoyed it, I’ll be happy to see you in the trenches with the rest of us as more news nears! (via CinemaToday)
