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20th Century Boys Film's World Premiere Held in Paris

posted on by Egan Loo
Press conference held in Louvre Museum in front of Mona LiSA painting

Not-So-Daily Link of the Day: Paris hosted the world premiere of the first live-action film for Naoki Urasawa's 20th Century Boys manga on Tuesday evening, and the two main movie castmembers held a press conference — not only at the city's famous Louvre Museum, but right in front of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa painting. 400 people watched the sold-out screening in the Publicis Champs-Elysées theater on the l'Avenue des Champs-Élysées throughway. 200 people reportedly stood in the standby-ticket line, including one male student who waited seven hours.

The Louvre Museum was shut down on the same day as the screening to hold the press conference with Toshiaki Karasawa (Casshern's Brayking Boss) and Takako Tokiwa (Brave Story's Cutts) in front of the Mona Lisa. The two castmembers play the protagonist Kenji and his childhood friend Yukiji, respectively. Over 80 members of the French press attended the first interview ever held at the site. While discussing the film, Tokiwa said that director Yukihiko Tsutsumi (Trick, Ikebukuro West Gate Park) asked her to assume the exact same poses that her character had in the manga version.

The movie is the first in a 6-billion-yen (US$55-million) trilogy adaptation of Urasawa's suspense manga. In the story, Karasawa's character Kenji learns that mysterious deaths and calamities around the world are connected to idle plans he and his childhood friends made decades ago. Over 20 million copies of the manga's 22 volumes have been published in 12 countries. Viz Media announced at Comic-Con International this month that it will release the original manga in North America starting next February. The first film will open in Japan on August 30 and then travel overseas to 20 regions in Asia and Europe. The Mona Lisa is arguably Louvre's most well-known piece, and it has the highest inflation-adjusted, appraised price of any painting in the world.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, Sankei Sports, Asahi Shimbun

Images © 1999, 2006 Naoki Urasawa, Studio Nuts/Shogakukan
© 2008 20th Century Boys Film Production Committee


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