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Live-Action 'I Am A Hero' Film's April 23 Opening, Visual Unveiled

posted on by Kyle Hallmark

The first 2016 issue of Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirits magazine revealed on Monday that the live-action film of Kengo Hanazwa's best-selling zombie manga I am a Hero will open on April 23. The magazine also presented the first visual in Japan of actor Yō Ōizumi as the main lead:

The film premiered at the 48th Sitges Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain in October, and it won the Grand Audience Award and Award for Best Special Effects.

Shinsuke Satō (Gantz, Library War, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, Princess Blade) directed the "A-grade survival panic horror" movie. Akiko Nogi (Library War, Sayonara, Robinson Crusoe) wrote the screenplay, and VFX and makeup expert Makoto Kamiya (Gantz, Cutie Honey, Resident Evil: Degeneration, Resident Evil: Damnation) was in charge of special effects. Principal photography began in early June 2014.

In the original manga, Hideo Suzuki (played by Yō Ōizumi in the live-action film) is an aspiring manga creator who once struggled with discontent with his assistant artist job and his relationship with his girlfriend — until people started turning into undead "ZQN" creatures overnight. After he is attacked by his ZQN virus-infected girlfriend "Tekko," Hideo flees the overrun Tokyo metropolis with the shotgun he happens to own as a hobby. He travels with Hiromi (played by Kasumi Arimura), a high school girl whom he meets by chance, and they face the desperate situation with the help of a nurse named Yabu (played by Masami Nagasawa) at a shopping mall.

Hanazawa launched the manga in Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirits magazine in 2009, and its compiled book volumes have over 4 million copies in print. Dark Horse Comics will release the manga in North America starting in April 2016. Yuuki Honda (Tokyo Yamimushi) launched an Osaka-based spinoff manga in June, and the manga will end in December.

Image via Comic Natalie


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