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| HanWay |
It’s probably some of the best news you’ll hear of it and with any luck it’ll mean a wider release granted than other titles from various distributors and their ridiculous event screenings, but the word now is that Miike Takashi’s 100th film, Blade Of The Immortal now has U.S. distribution over at Magnolia Pictures’s genre arm, Magnet Releasing in a deal with HanWay Films.
The film premiered in Japan on April 29 from Warner Bros. Japan and is currently slated as an Official Selection presentation at Cannes this week. Magnet is an especially good shingle for the film to reside at especially considering the film is home to, among its other cult titles, the first two installments of Kitano Takeshi’s Yakuza crime trilogy, Outrage and Beyond Outrage.
Based on the famous manga, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL follows the deeds of Manji, a skilled samurai in the Shogunate era who is cursed with immortality after a legendary battle.
Haunted by the murder of his sister, Manji knows that only by fighting evil will he be able to regain his soul. After Manji crosses paths with a young girl named Rin, he promises to help her avenge her parents, who were killed by a group of master swordsmen led by the ruthless warrior Anotsu.
But this mission changes Manji in ways he could never imagine.
Oishi Tetsuya (Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, Higanjima) adapted the screenplay inspired by the popular Samura Hiroaki manga which stars Kimura Takuya (Space Battleship Yamato), Sugisaki Hana (Mozu: The Movie) and Fukushi Sota (Library Wars trilogy) along with Ichihara Hayato (Yakuza Apocalypse), Toda Erika (Death Note: Light Up The New World), Ichikawa Ebizo (Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai), and Tanaka Min (Rurouni Kenshin 2 & 3). Blade Of The Immortal is currently one of two Miike-directed titles circulating among acquisition headlines in the past week with the other being Emperor Motion Pictures’s latest remastering and re-release grab of his mindbending 2001 cult crime horror manga adaptation, the controversal Ichi The Killer.
