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Netflix Partners With TBS to Release 3 New Shows Worldwide

Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) and Netflix announced on Wednesday that they have partnered to release three new shows worldwide. The first is Nihon Chinmotsu - Kibō no Hito (Japan Sinks - People of Hope), a new live-action version of Sakyo Komatsu's Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinmotsu) science fiction novel starring Shun Oguri. The series will premiere on television on October 10, and Netflix will begin streaming the series on the same day at 24:00 (effectively, on October 11 at midnight).

The second show is a reboot of TBS' famous reality series Future Diary (unrelated to Sakae Esuno's manga of the same title), which will debut in December.

The third show is a new Netflix series by writer Kankurō Kudō (live-action Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Kamui Gaiden) and producer Aki Isoyama (Ore no Ie no Hanashi) titled Kekkon Shiyō yo (Let's Get Married). It will start streaming in 2023.

The Japan Sinks science-fiction disaster novel debuted in 1973, and has since inspired two live-action films — one that also debuted in 1973, and another in 2006 by Gainax co-founder and Shin Godzilla director Shinji Higuchi. It also inspired a 1975 live-action series, as well as two manga adaptations: the first by Golgo 13 author Takao Saitō, and a 2006-2009 manga by Tokihiko Ishiki. Most recently, it inspired Masaaki Yuasa and Science SARU's Japan Sinks: 2020 anime series, which debuted on Netflix in July 2020, and moves the setting to the modern day. The novel is regarded as a science-fiction classic in Japan and around the world.

Mirai Nikki was a popular TBS reality show that aired for nine seasons from 1998 to 2002, and also inspired a film. In the reality program, the reality show staff hand a man and a woman a "diary" that has the rough outline of a budding romance between the two, and must act out and abidy by the events of the diary on the days indicated, but are otherwise free to act out an improvised romance based on their "characters" outside of the confines of the diary.

Kankurō Kudō and Aki Isoyama previously collaborated on the live-action Ikebukuro West Gate Park television series, and Kudo also wrote the screenplay for the Kamui Gaiden live-action film. He also wrote the picture book series Wasimo alongside illustrator Hajime Anzai, which inspired a series of NHK anime shorts that is still airing today.

Source: Eiga Natalie