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Takashi Miike's Samurai Film 'Thirteen Assassins' Gets a Greenlight

by Alex Billington
May 11, 2009

Beloved cult Japanese director Takashi Miike has gotten the funding and producers needed to finally make Thirteen Assassins, his samurai film. Based on Eiichi Kudo's 1963 film of the same name, the film is set in the shogun era and follows 13 assassins who come together for a suicide mission to kill an evil lord. Producers Jeremy Thomas and Toshiaki Nakazawa are teaming up to fund and produce the project, both of whom have a glowing background. Nakazawa produced this year's foreign language film Oscar winner Departures, Thomas produced Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which also won Best Picture.

For those unfamiliar with Miike, the filmmaker broke into the cult side of things here in the US with crazy films like Audition, Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer, and the original One Missed Call. He most recently directed the spaghetti western Sukiyaki Western Django, that Quentin Tarantino had a cameo in, as well as some other lighter films like God's Puzzle and Yatterman. I'm very interested to see what he can do with a samurai story, especially one as cool as this. Hopefully it won't take too long to show up in the US once it's been shot. Principal photography on Thirteen Assassins starts in July in Japan's Yamagature Prefecture.

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