News
Paradise Kiss Manga Gets Live-Action Film Green-Lit (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The October issue of Shodensha's women's fashion magazine Zipper is announcing on Monday that a live-action film adaptation of Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss manga has been green-lit. Keiko Kitagawa (live-action Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon's Sailor Mars, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift's Reiko) is starring in the film, and she also adorns the cover of Zipper's October issue. Osamu Mukai (Honey and Clover, Nodame Cantabile, Mei-chan no Shitsuji, Beck) will co-star, and the rest of the cast includes Natsuki Katō, Aya Ōmasa, Kento Kaku, Shunji Igarashi, and Yūsuke Yamamoto.
The original manga centered around a high school student named Yukari Hayasaka (Kitagawa) who is discovered by "Paradise Kiss," a group of up-and-coming fashion school students including Jōji "George" Koizumi (Mukai). The students transform Yukari (now nicknamed "Caroline") into a fashion model, and she discovers a new passion for a future career and potential romance in her personal life.
The manga ran in Zipper from 1999 to 2003, and Shodensha sold 6 million copies of the five compiled book volumes. Tokyopop began publishing the original manga in North America in 2001, and Madhouse's anime version aired in Japan in 2005. Geneon Entertainment (USA) licensed the anime for North America in 2006, although Funimation has since released the anime in DVD box sets.
The Hollywood Reporter magazine posted an article in 2009 about Fox International's negotiations for a Japanese-language, live-action film adaptation. According to the magazine, Fox International would be working with Japan's IMJ production company to produce the film with a budget of US$3 million to US$4 million, but these companies have not been announced for the current project.
Yazawa also created the Nana manga about polar-opposite roommates in Tokyo, and that manga has sold 34 million copies so far. IMJ and the Japanese TBS television network adapted Nana into two hit live-action films, and Aniplex and Madhouse adapted it into a television anime series. Viz Media is releasing the Nana manga, as well as its live-action and anime adaptations.
[Via Mushi]
Update: More background information added.
Update 2: The film will open in Japan in 2011. Eiga.com notes that Mukai is literally Kitagawa's sempai; Mukai is four years older than Kitagawa (who turned 24 on Sunday), and they both have attended Meiji University in Tokyo. Eiga.com also states that over 5 million copies of the manga have been published, and the story has been translated into 10 languages for America, Italy, Korea, and elsewhere.
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