In a non-COVID world, we would have seen Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s James Bond film No Time To Die last April and, if successful, the director would likely have been using that success to get him his next high-profile gig.
But despite Fukunaga having finished work on that film over a year ago, it’s still yet to be released. But the director isn’t twiddling his thumbs and waiting, as he’s found his next project. Fukunaga has signed on to direct an adaptation of cyberpunk comic book Tokyo Ghost.
The comic hails from Rick Remender and Sean Murphy, and is set in 2089, where humanity has become fully addicted to technology and entertainment in order to escape the hardships of reality. The story revolves around constables Debbie Decay and Led Dent, who work as peacekeepers in the Isles of Los Angeles. But their latest job will take them to the last tech-free country on Earth – Tokyo.
Remender will also write the script. He also created another comic book, The Last Days Of American Crime, which was turned into a Netflix movie last year. He also has a series in the works titled Fear Agent, in development at Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s company Point Grey. Fukunaga will also produce Tokyo Ghost under his Parliament of Owls banner alongside Hayden Lautenbach.
Blade Runner fans, and anyone into similar heady sci-fi, should be pretty excited by this. Tokyo Ghost has the kind of premise that will always be relevant, and imagining those images of a decaying 2089 Los Angeles up on the big screen is tantalizing. We’ll see what the budget is though. Blade Runner 2049, although a great film, didn’t exactly light up the box office, so studios might be wary of funding a similar film.
What is for sure is that Fukunaga is a talented director, even without seeing No Time To Die. He burst on the scene in 2009 with Mexican-American film Sin nombre, before going on to direct Beasts Of No Nation and the acclaimed first season of True Detective. He’s never done a sci-fi project like this, in fact he usually prefers to make projects set in the past.
In 2011 he helmed Jane Eyre, and he’s currently working on directing the first three episodes of Apple’s World War II series Masters Of The Air.
Tokyo Ghost sounds extremely intriguing. Hopefully it can come together quickly, but the success of No Time To Die might determine whether studios are interested in handing over a hefty budget. That film is now scheduled to hit cinemas Thursday, September 30.
#Peace.Love.TokyoGhost
