Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi (“Pacific Rim,” “Babel”) has been cast in Michael Mann’s ten-part crime saga series “Tokyo Vice” for the HBOMax streaming service. Kikuchi will portray a supervisor to lead character – journalist Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort).
Based on the 2009 non-fiction memoir by Adelstein, Tony-winning playwright J.T. Roger will adapt the scripts which follow the American journalist’s first-hand account of being the first foreigner to work at Japan’s biggest newspaper where worked the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. The book chronicled his daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo, where nothing is what it seems.
Mann is directing the pilot and is understood to have pushed for Kikuchi to play the part rather than Mari Yamamoto who was originally slated to play the character. The series also stars Ken Watanabe as an organized crime detective and mentor figure along with Odessa Young and Ella Rumpf.
Japanese production company AOI Pro was scheduled to be involved but has pulled out due to concerns about the inclusion of Tadamasa Goto as a character. Goto is a now-retired notorious yakuza boss who remains on a list of sanctioned yakuza by the US Treasury Department.
Mann will executive produce along with J.T. Rogers, Lesher, Emily Gerson Saines, Alan Poul, Elgort, Destin Daniel Cretton and Watanabe. Filming on the ten-part series began in Tokyo on Thursday.
Source: THR
